The Archdeacon and the Gypsy
by Leraiv Snape
Summary: Role-Reversal Romance: Esmeralda pursues the Archdeacon of Notre-Dame, Claude Frollo, throwing both of them into crisis. Based on "Frollo and Esmeralda: A Love Story" Parts 1&2, to be found on YouTube.
1. Part I: Falling

Disclaimer: The world of the hunchback belongs primarily to Victor Hugo and his novel, written and published in 1831. Other rights go to Disney, who created some of the scenes I used in this piece.

Author's Note: There are a few things to note about this story:

1: Frollo is the Archdeacon of Notre-Dame as in Hugo's book, not a judge as Disney would have it.

2: Phoebus is an arrogant womanizer and a coward, much as he is portrayed in the original.

3: The characters of Fleur de Lis, her mother, and Louis Beaumont, the Bishop of Paris, are taken from Hugo's work.

4: I am not now, nor have I ever been, Catholic. The religious views and thoughts expressed in this piece are intended to portray the thoughts of the characters having them, and may or may not have anything to do with my own. I apologize for any mistakes in rituals, beliefs or theology that I may have made. I intend no disrespect to the Church.

This story is a full 180-degree turn from my other piece for this pairing. It was inspired by a pair of videos on youtube, "Frollo and Esmeralda: A Love Story" Parts 1 & 2, made by "Lookattheview90" for a Disney's villain-heroine role-reversal contest. Further inspiration was provided by a passage from _The Hunchback of Notre-Dame_, one of many describing Frollo's obsessive and torturous thoughts about Esmeralda:

"And when he strove to picture to himself the happiness that he might have found on earth if she had not been a gypsy, and if he had not been a priest, if Phoebus had not existed, and if she had loved him; when he considered that a life of serenity and affection might have been possible for him, too, even for him; that, at that very moment, there were here and there on the earth happy couples lost in long conversations under orange groves, on the banks of murmuring streams, in the presence of a setting sun, or of a starry sky, and that, if God had willed it, he might have formed with her one of those blessed couples, his heart dissolved in tenderness and despair."

The following is a story in which God so wills it…

Part One: Falling

"Father?"

Archdeacon Frollo paused in his unhurried stride under the vaulting arches of Notre-Dame's aisles, turning to kindly hush the woman bold enough to call aloud, her voice cutting across the soft murmur of his parishioners' prayers.

The calm words died aborning when he saw who it was. It was _her_. Slim, raven-haired, barefoot. Even devoid of her tambourine and treading quietly on the dark stone, music seemed to permeate the air around her and dance tinged her footsteps.

Beautiful. And in a very dangerous way.

A man met many women, especially a man of his stature and position in Paris. He presided over their births, their christenings, their weddings and their funerals. He heard their confessions, soothed their wounds over a husband's betrayal, and guided them back to the Light if they strayed.

Never, in thirty years of devout service, since he was a babe and beginning to form memories, had a woman impressed Frollo so strongly, or disturbed him so deeply. His mind offered her image to him at the strangest of moments, presenting her dancing, singing, flirting with her ever-present audience, always visible from the balconies of the cathedral he called home. And now she stood before him, breathless, the hungry light in her eyes as she searched his face a warning that she saw the man in the archdeacon's apparel, not the Church or the sanctity of its priesthood.

He should not speak to her. There was a wealth of information in her glance, and all of it opened doors he dared not enter. He had consecrated himself to Notre-Dame, to Christ, to the Church herself, when he was a boy. His life belonged to the people of Paris – and to her, as one of them, but never to himself, or to her, as more than one of a multitude.

But decades of service had conditioned his tongue, and he found himself asking, "What can I do for you, my child?"

She moved closer to him, mindless of the many scattered amongst the pews that might witness their discussion and misconstrue it. Watching her warily, he began to back away, towards one of the deserted side-chapels. He did not trust the fire in her green eyes, and whatever she had to say, best it be done in private, where whispers could not be spread.

She seemed to realize what he was doing, and quickened her step, speeding them to their destination. He swallowed as they ducked beneath the small arch that cut the chapel off from the rest of the cathedral, searching for some way to stop her before she began, before she sent them careening down a path that could only hurt them both—

"I love you."

He froze, his head bowed over clasped hands. _This _was what he feared. This claim, this…invitation…to share in her desire.

He did not lift his head to answer in his low voice. "I know you do." Thank God his voice did not tremble in addressing this test.

He felt the weight of her hand on his sleeve, gentle in entreaty, asking a question. He folded his arms and took a step away from her, refusing contact.

Esmeralda waited. She knew she had taken a terrible risk, coming to him here, approaching him in his domain. But his time in the street was always marked by a flock those seeking words of comfort, reassurance or forgiveness. There was no way to speak to him about what she wanted in the midst of a crowd…and she had thought of little else other than ways to catch a glimpse of him, to find herself in his presence, for months.

She remembered – with the stunning clarity of those in love – the day she had seen the austere face she had grown to adore for the first time.

It was sunset. An afternoon of dancing had failed make her feet sore for years, but she knew that she had been on display for a large part of the day and was eager to see the sun sink below the horizon, that they might leave.

It had been a busy afternoon, but as Paris faded into twilight, it became quiet and peaceful. Her partner, Pierre, who played both drums and flute, had ducked to the market to buy something to eat, and now only she and Djali were dancing to the shimmering of her tambourine.

In a pause, a low, intent voice reached her ears. Esmeralda glanced about curiously, but their nook of this side-street to Notre-Dame's square was deserted. Still, the voice continued, seeming almost to flow over her… She lifted her head to see a slender, older man watching the sunset, eyes focused on the horizon as if it held all the beautiful secrets of creation. The words that streamed from his lips had the foreign-and-familiar cadence of a Latin chant, a prayer he offered to the dying sun.

The soul simmering in his sky-blue eyes as he spoke to the Creator he served (for there was no doubt in her mind that he belonged to the cathedral – everyday people just didn't _pray_ like that) captivated her. What would it be like to feel the full weight of that regard?

And then, perhaps sensing her gaze on him, he turned his face downward to meet her wide green eyes. Devotion burned fiercely there, a deep emotion that made it possible to die for one's love, and the gypsy found her hands reaching for the wall, clutching stone to keep herself upright.

His glance gentled, becoming the eyes of a priest, and she knew that the moment that had weakened her knees was no more than an echo, a rebounded look from his evening prayer, not meant for her to witness. He inclined his head and smiled faintly in greeting, raised his hand in a blessing, and departed.

That was all it had taken.

Ever since she had blossomed into her adult beauty at fifteen years old, Esmeralda had been aware of the sidelong glances of admiration, the outright stares of lust as she walked, danced, even cooked in her niche at the Cour des Miracles. She had been hearing lewd remarks ever since, mixed occasionally with beautiful protestations of love and affection that left her indifferent.

But she had _never _had a glance of worship turned on her, and Esmeralda promised herself as the priest disappeared from sight, that she would discover who he was, and find a way to make him look at her like that again.

She had immediately begun coming to mass every Sunday, seeking him. She had quickly learned that not only was Claude Frollo a priest, but he occupied the position of Archdeacon of Notre-Dame, responsible for the cathedral and everyone in it, and answerable only to the Bishop of Paris. He led mass, smiled at the elderly, spoke to the children, took confession and in general, served anyone who asked anything of him, however big or small.

However, the Sunday service was _not _the way to gain his attention. She had spent months trying to figure out how, feeling stymied at every turn. It had brought her to this – a full confession, though of a rather different nature than those he was accustomed to handling, in the hopes that whatever she glimpsed in his eyes when he looked at her meant she was _someone _to him.

As the young woman in front of him waited, Frollo was also rapidly traversing memory lane. He had perfect recall of the first instant he'd noticed her, while praying at the end of the day, right before the evening bells rang in the night. He had been savoring a quiet moment on his one selfishness – the private balcony that he kept the sole key for, a space that he might have the chance to commune with the Lord without being asked to intercede on behalf of another.

The sun's dying effulgence was always magnificent here, the orb appearing to sink into the river, lending the Seine a molten cast, as if gold were flowing with the water. The brilliant rays of the sunset struck his cathedral, turning white stone into a panorama of dazzling color, a painting no man could capture on canvas.

Frollo had often wondered whether in the flurry and furor of making lame men walk and blind men see, of walking on water and wrestling with Satan, mankind had not over-looked the far greater and more complex miracle their Lord had bestowed upon them: that of the astonishing beauty of their own existence.

Eyes fixed on the sparkling water, he heard himself chanting the Latin before he realized it, and let the simplicity of prayer carry him forward, praising God for his day, supplicating for His forgiveness…

A pair of eyes impinged on his solitude. Not eyes from behind, for the balcony was off-limits to all others, but eyes from below. Without consciously thinking about it, Frollo took his glance from the Seine and followed the feeling until he ended up staring into the struck gaze of a young gypsy woman.

She was uncommonly pretty, her eyes an arresting shade of green he had never seen before, but it was the way she watched him that marked her as different…as if _her_ prayers had been answered.

And perhaps they had been. Kind as he was to them along with all others, the Archdeacon did _not_ approve of the gypsy way of life. They were not baptized, did notattend mass or, indeed, worship God in any way that he could understand. They also seemed concerned mostly with entertainment – palm readers, card tricks, displays of "magic", singing, dancing – instead of real crafts or professions. Though he would not join most of his fellow priests in decrying such stories and illusions as witchcraft, he did not think that such transitory things could lead them to Heaven.

Perhaps something in his prayer had struck a chord in her. Frollo firmly believed that the gypsies were not God-less, just untrained, like rather large and boisterous children. And if his moment of peace had impacted her soul, it was as God intended.

He smiled down at her, made the sign of the cross over her in blessing, and returned to his duties.

He hadn't given her another thought until he saw her at mass that Sunday. She stood very near the back, as if nervous and uncertain whether she was welcome. He deliberately kept track of her throughout the service, and though she seemed ill at ease, she stayed. When communion had been taken and it was time to speak to the people of Paris, he approached her first, before she could bolt away from the unfamiliar setting and crowd.

"I am pleased that you came, my child," he told her. She seemed to be waiting for something from him, her jade-green eyes bright as they fixed on his face. "If you wish to take communion next week," he continued, remembering that she had not approached for the sacrament, "one of the priests can take your confession."

This was, it appeared, not the right thing to say. Her face remained neutral, but her eyes dimmed considerably, and he wondered why, briefly, before the next parishioner stepped forward to claim his attention.

He had continued to see her at mass, always at the back, always uncertain, never taking communion, but he could feel her eyes on him from the instant she entered until she exited quietly at the end. There seemed to be some terrible struggle going on behind her intelligent, mobile features, but he discovered that she had not unburdened herself to anyone in the church.

"The gypsy?" one of his younger priests asked in surprise when Frollo broached the subject. "Why are you asking, Father?" He then blushed faintly, and the Archdeacon frowned.

"What is it?" The girl was beautiful and an anomaly, but he would not have one of his brethren disgracing the priesthood and Notre-Dame by lusting for her.

"Well…" His friend, another of Frollo's charges who had only recently taken his vows, was sweeping out the pews next to them. He glanced up, took pity on the stumbling priest the Archdeacon was interrogating, and announced bluntly:

"It's clear she's here for _you, _sir." Frollo whipped around so quickly he nearly lost his balance, gripping a bench to steady himself as he stared at the other man.

"_What?"_

Shifting nervously from foot to foot, the second priest found the courage to continue. "The way she looks at you, Archdeacon…she comes to see you, specifically." A long silence, in which Frollo glowered at his underling, awaiting further explanation. "She fancies you," he finally said baldly, when it was clear the Archdeacon was not taking his hints.

The idea staggered him. It infuriated him that one of his own would dismiss the girl in such a way. Anger welled up at the insolence of such a suggestion and for the first time in his life, the Archdeacon came very close to dismissing a priest without just cause.

But in the intervening weeks, Frollo had watched her carefully, become convinced (in spite of himself) that his young priest was correct, and had been both bewildered and – treacherously – flattered. She was dazzling, radiant, brimming with life, overflowing with the wild joy that only youth can possess…and he was old, at least twice her age, a celibate man living a contained life.

And now she stood before him, asking him a question he had to deny, making an offer he must refuse.

"I cannot," he finally managed. He lifted his head to look her directly in the eye, allowing some of his frustration to bleed into their interaction for the first time. How dare she put him in such a compromising position?

Her face fell, and anger flashed there alongside despair. "You're rejecting me?"

"It cannot be helped," he replied, and allowed his voice to turn frigid. "As…tempting…as the offer may be… I am the Archdeacon. Notre-Dame is my world." He tilted his head at her in dismissal and brushed past her, back into the main sanctuary, back to the peace of confession and absolution that formed his daily life.

As he left, he tried to ignore the raw pain that twisted her face.

888

Esmeralda sank to the floor of the tiny side-chapel, burying her face in her knees. _As…tempting…as the offer may be…_he had turned it into an insult, a sneer playing about the mouth that had always been so kind before…

_I _did _put him in a difficult position_, she acknowledged wryly. He was a man of the Church. Everyone knew that Rome forbade her priests to marry. To touch women at all.

And she was a gypsy. A young, foolish gypsy who could offer him nothing as compensation for her love.

"How could I be so stupid, Djali?" she asked her goat as he butted against her. "Thinking that a man like him could have any kind of feeling for a girl like me?"

Djali bleated, warm brown eyes seeming to tell her that it wasn't really so bad.

She stroked his soft hair, gathered up the pluck that had led her to this mortification in the first place, and started home.

888

She had thought to put her heart to peace with her failed attempt. Esmeralda knew she was beautiful, and had no lack of men, both gypsy and French, telling her so. Something about Frollo's gaze had made her certain that the Archdeacon thought so, too. The difference was that for him, it didn't matter what he, personally, thought of her. He had married the great stone effigies of the Holy Virgin and her Blessed Son, and was no freer to seek her out or call enticements to her while she danced than the Pope.

Not that she wanted him to, she reflected ruefully as she shook her tambourine, her feet nimbly skipping over the ground. She was dancing for such a crowd now, and their crude suggestions and mocking yells left her disgusted, unmoved. She thought it entirely possible that her whole fascination with the Archdeacon was due to the very fact that he did _not _involve himself in such antics.

She refused to cross the threshold of the cathedral after her dismissal, feeling it would be not only pointless, but hypocritical. He knew, now, that her interest had never been in his religion, but in him, and it would be cruel, after his mild, heartfelt attentions to her soul, to throw that in his face.

And so she thought her unruly heart might be forced to discipline with time, and the only remedy between now and that day – however far off it may be – was to continue living, pretending what she did not feel until it could once again be forged into genuine emotion.

Until she looked up from dancing not a month after he had turned her away, to see him on his balcony. This time, it was not the Seine that had captured his glance. He was watching _her_.

Frollo caught her eye as she raised her head, and summoned every ounce of self-control he possessed to keep himself from breaking her glance or retreating like a naughty altar-boy caught in the sweets box.

Her raised eyebrows over lively green eyes asked the same question he had been contemplating himself. Why was he here? What was he doing, watching this young woman he had turned away? What had prompted him to find a way to pass the clear, mullioned windows once daily in his circuits of Notre-Dame, to see the obsidian waterfall of her hair tossing as she performed?

At this last self-recrimination, his restraint broke, and he did back away from the balcony edge, retreating to the wooden bench that served as the balcony's sole furnishing, his view of the street blocked by the elaborate stone railing.

The bells began to toll. Six. It would soon be time for vespers. But until then…he rose swiftly from his seat. Until then, he could take refuge in the bell tower, and allow the clanging of the great instruments to cleanse him of thought, drive out the confusion of feelings besieging him.

As he emerged from the stairwell to the balcony, he found himself face-to-face with the greatest test God had ever sent him. Before she could speak, he held up a hand, keeping his gaze fixed past her. "Please, excuse me," and continued on without waiting for her reply.

Footsteps echoed behind him, and he made for the spiral stair that would lead him to the tower, praying that he might reach the second door in time to turn the key and lock her out…

He did, and it was with remorse he turned the iron in its lock, but he did not know if he could withstand another assault from her now. Now he needed the tower, the sound of the bells singing in his ears, wiping his mind clean of perplexions…

His charge found him in deep contemplation some minutes later, seated at the wooden table, eyes closed as the pealing sound of clappers on metal faded into the gathering night.

"Father?" Quasimodo hobbled up to him. "What do you need?" he asked eagerly.

It was a shame that such a purity of soul should be trapped in so hideous a body, Frollo thought as he opened his eyes to the enthusiastic expression of his foster-son, abandoned at the door to the cathedral some twenty years ago. Quasimodo's humble acceptance of his fate lent him a wisdom many would benefit from, but his distorted features prevented others from seeing the beauty of the soul inside, and so the bells had become the hunchback's constant companions.

Frollo had advised him to stay in the tower after a particularly vicious bout of teasing from some of the divinity students when Quasimodo had been but a boy. The heartbreak of understanding how very different he was than everyone else, how unacceptable to their society, had led to months of moroseness, and the Archdeacon had taken steps to ensure it would never be repeated. The adopted bell ringer had a delicacy of hand and a flare for the artistic that Frollo had encouraged, purchasing paints, wood, knives and glass for Quasimodo to use, indicating that craft could take the place of people in the boy's world.

The result was on display on the table before him: a spectacular rendition of Paris in miniature, encompassing an ever-expanding ring of buildings and people as far as the eye could see from the top of Notre-Dame's great towers.

"I seek only a little rest, my boy," Frollo replied tiredly, a hand on Quasimodo's lumpy shoulder. "You need not attend me. Go about your business."

"Yes, Father." And he loped away with the peculiar, easy grace he had developed despite his bowed legs.

Frollo closed his eyes again and sought for the peace in his soul, a peace he had not – until recently – been having trouble finding. He stilled his mind, shoved thoughts of the girl to one side, and sighed with relief when calm inundated him, Latin pouring from his lips as he focused body as well as soul on his prayer—

It was almost immediately disrupted.

"Father—"

"Quasimodo, please—"

"Archdeacon Frollo?" The second voice cut him off and he rose violently in dismay, staring at the vision now come to torment him in in the flesh.

"How did you—?" He stopped when he saw the key clutched in Quasimodo's big fist. He glared at the hunchback in a rare display of ire.

"Sorry, Master," the bell ringer stammered, placing the offending key down on the table. "She was just outside…and she said she had business with you…" He backed away quickly, retreating to the dark corners of his tower.

Leaving him alone with the girl who had begun to prey on his mind even before her confession, and had twisted him up in savage knots ever since.

"You were watching me." She said it in a voice that was half wonder, half triumph.

He could deny it, but that would be a lie, and she would see it for what it was. "So I was."

"Why?"

_Why?_ He could not explain it, not even to himself. He did not _want _her, not in the way the base men he tried to counsel wisely _wanted_ her. He did not fantasize about her. But he was…aware of her. Aware in a way that he had never been of anyone else who lived outside of Notre-Dame's high walls. It was this…feeling…a tenacious wish to know where she was, how she was faring, that had drawn him to the windows and the balcony.

She reached out and gently brushed her fingers over the back of the hand he'd laid on the table. He started, jumping backwards.

"I don't bite, Father," she teased, smiling.

"We shall see," he replied solemnly. "I believe I have already made my wishes known to you. Yet, you are…persistent."

"My brother once told me that nothing good comes easy," she replied boldly, taking another step towards him. He fought his urge to retreat, not wishing to engage in her parody of dance.

"And _I _am 'something good'? A man twice your age or more? A man of the cloth? Spare me," he snorted dismissively, turning away. "For one of your youth and bohemian beauty to profess love for a man such as I…is so unlikely as to be absurd. You are a test, a temptation."

It was her turn to recoil. "You truly believe that?" He was shocked to hear pity lacing the indignation in her voice. "You think that's all this is?"

"It is all it can be," he said firmly, unsettled by the intensity of her dismay. He started towards the stairs, resolving to leave her and purge his thoughts before taking command of his priests once more. "Charming as you are, it is a test I intend to pass."

He descended without another word, and did not hear Quasimodo sidle up to the beautiful woman standing in tears.

"You love him?" he seemed genuinely confused by the concept.

"I really do," she whispered, her knuckles whitening on the table as she gripped it.

"But priests don't have wives," Quasimodo said slowly, as if that should be the end of it. "My father…he would never…"

"I know," she breathed heavily, banishing the water in her eyes and dashing it fiercely from her cheeks. "He has told me as much twice, now."

Shy as he was, unskilled in personal relationships as he was, Quasimodo had, nevertheless, spent a lifetime learning to observe. And one of the things he was absorbing now was a surprising truth about the straight-backed man who had just left them. He reached up and awkwardly patted her shoulder. "If he could, he would," he said. Her head whipped round to look at him. He blushed, and removed his hand. "Love you, I mean."

"Really?" The smile that touched her mouth transformed her face, making her breathtaking.

"Oh yes. You're very beautiful, you know." He said it so matter-of-factly that she laughed.

"Thank you, Quasimodo." She made her way towards the stairs, feeling a bit lighter. _"If he could, he would."_

_But he can't. So what will I do now?_

888

"Ah, ma petite seour!" Clopin announced as he settled himself beside her at her fire, watching as she stirred rice and beans in an old but well-kept pot in her corner of the Cour des Miracles.

"Hello, Clopin," she flashed him a quick, empty smile.

"Something is wrong," he said, tilting his head curiously. "What is it?"

"It's nothing," she shook her head. She felt his long fingers close over her elbow, preventing her from reaching her spoon. "Clopin! If I don't stir it, it will burn!"

"You are troubled," he ignored her distress over the beans. "Why? Did someone disturb you?" His expression darkened, and she felt a rush of gratitude at his protectiveness. They had both been orphaned at a young age – a plight common in gypsy families – and had swiftly adopted each other. He was her adored older brother, she his cherished younger sister, and as they had grown, and she had become a young woman half the Court lusted after, he had guarded her resolutely from those who would think to tame her indomitable spirit.

"No," she denied. But he did not let her go.

"Don't lie to me, little sister. Who has dimmed your radiance? If he is here, I will take out his tongue. Or break his arms, whichever you prefer."

"No!" Her shout brought curious heads up from other fires. Esmeralda and Clopin were known for their closeness – an argument was surely fodder for gossip.

"Esme!" he hissed furiously, aware of the ears around them. He was startled to see the gloss of tears brightening her eyes. "Little sister…"

"It is nothing. You will think me stupid," she murmured, wrenching away from his weakened grip.

"It's the Archdeacon, isn't it?" Her head snapped up in astonishment to see a wise, contemplative expression on his face, replacing the anger of a few moments ago and the mischief that so often graced their conversation.

"How did you know?"

"I observe for a living, dearest Esme. It's been clear for months you've been after him." He shivered. "Although I don't know _why_. Paris is crawling with handsome men of every profession who would gladly lay down their lives for the _thought_ of warming your bed, and you have to chase one of the oldest men in the city?"

"He's not old," she answered crisply, recovering her aplomb. "He's only in his thirties. He's dignified. And he doesn't _crawl_, like those puling boys you mentioned."

"You know how the Church is about its priests."

She sighed. "Yes. I know. _He_ knows, too."

"So what will you do?" Clopin asked. "How can I help you?" He laughed at her amazed glance. "He is not my type, ma chérie, but if you want him—" He stopped as she shook her head.

"Thank you, brother, but it is time I put him out of my mind. He will have nothing to do with me. He is a priest, and I, a gypsy."

He shrugged. "As you wish. But," he ducked his head to whisper against her ear, "the Feast of Fools is coming. You always dance. He always comes." He withdrew and winked lazily. "Make an impression he can't forget."

888

The Feast of Fools.

The Archdeacon sighed. The populous, this fickle crowd that formed the mob of Paris, loved it. They loved the dancing, the drinking, the morality plays, the drinking, the acrobats, the drinking – and the day's crowning achievement, the election of the King of Fools. And the drinking.

He viewed it as part of his duties to not only to attend, but to send his priests out as well and open the main sanctuary of Notre-Dame as a safe haven for those who invariably drank too much, or had the better part of their money and, possibly, wardrobe, stolen by the dishonest, or who broke a bone by dancing too vigorously or falling off the various stages that had already been erected in the main square. Father Maurice, who had always had a kind hand and manner as well as a knack for the human body, was in charge of medicine, and was already in full flow this morning, arranging bandages, tonics, washing solutions and rosaries in one of the cathedral's many vestibules. Frollo regarded most illnesses as sickness of the soul, but he, too, had studied medicine as a young man, and there was no denying that having a group of priests and brothers well-trained in setting bones and wrapping wounds was a boon to Paris and a service they were glad to offer.

Nevertheless, no matter their wealth of preparations, it remained a day he heartily dreaded the arrival of every year, and was always grateful, when the last of the revelers had collapsed in the early hours of the morning, that he had survived yet another sixth of January.

Today he found himself so apprehensive he could not stand still. He paced incessantly as the morning bells rang out their joyful sound, as he curtly dispatched the younger priests to their obligations, as he waited.

For he knew he was waiting, and damned himself for it, but he could not help it. Every year, the gypsies outshone themselves as this festival. They orchestrated a large part of the entertainment – song and dance, fortune-telling, palm-reading, animal acrobatics. This was the one day of the calendar year that they were neither reviled nor mistrusted, but welcomed in the city by all.

There was no chance, none at all, that she would fail to appear.

Frollo shook his head, despairing. _"You think that's all this is?"_ The passionate burst of her speech, the gentle touch of her fingertips grazing his…

He had forced himself not to approach the windows, not to use his balcony until full night had descended and she was guaranteed to be gone. This sense of restless sorrow, of discontent for closing the door on a world half-glimpsed by her offer, would fade if he but let it. He had been blessed his whole life. That such a test should come now was the chance to prove his sincerity, the depth of his belief. He _would _conquer himself.

The whooping of the crowd outside penetrated his brooding. The Parade of Fools had begun, with its bizarre costumes and grotesque masks. Steeling himself, Frollo exited the cathedral and took his chair at a moderate distance from the stage.

"You are the Archdeacon?" a tumbler in an outrageous, purple-blue-and-yellow checked costume queried, popping up on one side as he seated himself. Frollo nodded, frowning. The man's smile was a shade too knowing for his liking. "You will like her today," he announced from the priest's other side, vanishing and reappearing. "She is always beautiful – but it is like Heaven itself when she is dancing for you."

He disappeared before Frollo could do more than gape at him. He wondered darkly if he should stay. What _had _the girl planned if this comrade of hers knew about it? Dancing for _him_?

His debate ended when the first entertainer – Esmeralda's harbinger – vaulted onto the stage and went up in gunpowder-induced smoke. It was she who replaced him. Frollo swallowed hard as she immediately found him in his seat above the crowd and smiled, the red of her dress twirling as she delightedly pranced around the stage, her grin a summons to join her.

Then she was leaping towards him, nimbly making her way over the heads of the crowd, delicate feet finding purchase on this shoulder, on that head, until she came to a halt on the arm of his chair.

She was flushed with her exertions, breathless both at his nearness and her dance as she ran her silk scarf around his neck, dark fingers fluttering over the planes of his face as she drew him upwards, until the only thing in his sight were her vivid green eyes, the straight, fine point of her nose, the full, red lips, the masses of raven hair tickling his face—

Would she kiss him _here_, when she held him at her mercy in front of all Paris? And the damning thought that managed to wedge itself through the closed-and-locked doors of the Archdeacon's mind sang out, _Let her!_

No. She would not. The scarf brought him so close he could feel the rapid whispers of her exhales across his mouth, only to have her abruptly release him, cavorting back to her stage.

He wanted to sag back in his chair, to thank God for his reprieve, but he knew the crowd was now watching them both, and he could not afford to show them how deeply she affected him. He deliberately folded his arms and looked away disdainfully, the very image of pious disapproval.

Shortly after her dance, when the mob was busy booing those foolish enough to unmask themselves and make hideous faces, hoping to be selected as the King of Fools for the day, one of his charges materialized at his side.

"Sir, there's been an accident—" the altar boy stammered.

"Take me." Frollo quit his chair with no small amount of relief. At last, something useful to do. _Anything _to take his mind off the girl.

_Anything but this_, he amended, appalled, when they reached the scene. He closed his eyes briefly in empathy. Three carts lay overturned in the road, and though it was clear that most of the drivers and passengers had been able to avoid it, one man lay crushed under the wheel of the bread wagon. The priest had hoped to help – but here, there was nothing to be done.

"You have done well," Frollo told the altar boy, sending him on his way with a squeeze to his shoulder. The unfortunate victim had death written on his wracking frame. There was no need to make the child witness it.

"Father…" the man wheezed, bubbles of blood bursting at the corners of his mouth as Frollo knelt in the frozen mud next to him.

"I am here, my son," he replied.

"I…no time…last confess—" he coughed, and sent his body into spasms as it grated against his broken ribs and punctured lungs.

"May your soul reside with our Father Who art in Heaven," the Archdeacon said solemnly, crossing the man in benediction. The cart driver nodded painfully, heaved a last, racking breath, and lay still.

Frollo rose slowly, his eye catching the simple iron band on the man's fourth finger. Married then, leaving a widow that would need care, and probably children as well. If the family was in luck, there would be sons close enough to working age to help.

"Find out who his family is," he instructed Father Maurice, who was supervising a young nun bandaging the scraped knee of one of the women. "And what they will need in the coming months."

"Yes, Archdeacon," his boyhood friend agreed. Frollo began his walk back towards the main festival, all thoughts of Esmeralda, of the effect of her nearness and the way he had wanted, just for a moment, to give into her, driven from his mind. He had attended deaths by the dozens, perhaps by the hundreds, and heard the last confessions of many souls.

He always mourned the young and the accidental the most.

888

Clopin frowned as he scanned the area. The Archdeacon had been there – he'd spoken to the man himself, teasing him about Esmeralda and her appearance for the day, but now, when the hunchback had been crowned King of Fools, he was nowhere to be found.

The gypsy's mouth twisted crossly. How could he carry out the next stage of his plan if the priest had decided to depart?

There! He could see the dark robes of a church man cutting towards him through the high-spirited crowd. He was nearing the tents they were using as prop storage…and changing rooms.

Clopin's frowned turned into a broad grin. He couldn't have staged a better set-up if he'd tried. Frollo also appeared to be completely lost in thought, which could only be to his advantage.

A few more steps and Frollo would be there, all it took was a clumsy stride—

Clopin slipped on a patch of ice and went careening into the Archdeacon, who in turn tumbled into a tent. Lying in the cold mud on the street, the gypsy simply smiled at the baffled passersby as they crowded round to help him up.

888

Esmeralda was preparing dispiritedly to dress for her next act. She had _seen _the Archdeacon's expression when she had danced for him. When she had been sitting on his chair, his pupils had dilated, blue eyes fastened on her mouth, his breathing as ragged as hers. _Begging_ to be kissed.

Not that she would embarrass him so in front of a crowd. But then he had turned away, scorn radiating from him, and was gone by the time she had been able to look round for him again after the crowning of Quasimodo.

_Damn Clopin and his everlasting capacity for hope!_ she thought savagely as she reached for her next dress. She was finished with this. Frollo would never have her, so—

She heard the rip of fabric, saw a long hand grasp desperately at the privacy curtain, heard it tear from its moorings, and the whole thing crashed down. She quickly belted her dressing gown, turning irritably.

"Hey—!"

It was him, wrapped in a heap of cloth on her floor. Her furious diatribe was cut off at its source. He glanced up, saw her, flushed bright red, and averted his gaze. "I'm sorry, I wouldn't…I never—"

Frollo closed his eyes in shame at blushing and stammering like a novice. To have tumbled into this tent…any would have been bad, but none could be worse. She would surely press her case this time, and he could not, in full honesty, protest his innocence. His hauteur for her dance had been his own part in the performance for the crowd, but she had witnessed the reality of his reaction – it was her mercy alone that had kept him from disgrace.

"I know you wouldn't." Her voice was so soft he dared to look at her again. She was completely and modestly covered, her hand extended to help him up. "Are you all right?" she asked when he didn't move.

He shook himself. "Of course. Thank you." After a beat of hesitation, he took her proffered hand.

It was the first time he had touched her voluntarily. A faint shock travelled from where her fingers wrapped around his to the center of his being, arresting his movement, anchoring him to the ground.

One corner of her mouth curled upward as he recovered and stood, but he knew, as he released her hand, that she, too, had felt it – and that she knew he had.

Still, she said nothing. No attack was forthcoming, though he had not spared her his tongue when the positions were reversed and she had made herself vulnerable to him.

"I…enjoyed your performance," he allowed by way of apology and confession as she moved the tent-flap aside to let him out discreetly.

She beamed, and Frollo had the same realization Quasimodo had come to several weeks ago. Her face was beautiful in repose. When she genuinely smiled, the air suddenly seemed too thin to breathe. "Thank you…Claude."

The sweet caress her voice gave his given name was an apt revenge, robbing him of the little breath he had left. It left him staring after her as the curtain fell, wondering if there was any path open to him that did not involve getting snared in her net.

8888888888

A/N: Let me know what you think! "Ma petit seour" and "ma cheré" are French for "my little sister" and "my dear". This piece is complete in three parts and an epilogue, all written, which will be updated weekly.


	2. Part II: Caught

Disclaimer: The world of the hunchback belongs primarily to Victor Hugo and his novel, written and published in 1831. Other rights go to Disney, who created some of the scenes I used in this piece.

Author's Note: This chapter introduces Phoebus. Enjoy!

Part Two: Caught

"Who is that?" Phoebus de Châteaupers, Captain of the King's Archers, asked one of his lieutenants as the darkly beautiful gypsy finished her number and waltzed offstage. Her trick with the Archdeacon had amused the guards ringing the square no end. From years in the Crusades, Phoebus knew the Church to be full of wily men who got plenty of what they wanted as long as they avoided outright scandal, but Archdeacon Claude Frollo of Notre-Dame seemed to be as sincerely pious as they came. His cold reaction after the girl had practically placed herself in his lap and all-but-made-love to him in front of half the city was proof of that. Or perhaps he was a eunuch. No true man with blood in his veins could be so candidly disinterested in her charms.

"Esmeralda, sir. Gypsy. Performs in the street most days," the lieutenant shrugged.

Phoebus had a strong feeling that he'd seen her around the city, but somehow, she'd never made an impression until today. Until the intensity of her bold dance. What would it have been like to be sitting in the Archdeacon's chair for those few seconds?

He suddenly had a very powerful desire to find out. "Find her for me," he ordered. "I want to meet her."

The lieutenant grinned. "You and the entire male population of the city, sir. I'll get her for you."

"_Nicely,_ lieutenant," Phoebus warned his underling firmly. "I won't have you scaring her off." The man saluted and started through the crowd.

It was time, after all – past time, really – to settle down and have a family. This Esmeralda was the first woman to have caught his eye since he'd arrived in Paris a few months ago. She was a gypsy, and they were a wandering folk, but that unfortunate circumstance could be handled. He was confident that anything would be open for compromise once she had the chance to see how much he could offer her.

Yes. She might be just the one.

888

"Your friend is back," Pierre murmured teasingly as she danced. Reflexively, Esmeralda raised her eyes to the balcony, hoping to see Frollo standing there—

But her gaze snagged instead on Captain Phoebus at street level, tossing a coin into the hat as was customary and giving her a cocky grin.

She ground her teeth. It had been a little over two weeks since the Feast of Fools, and not only had she _not_ seen the Archdeacon, but suddenly, this captain she had never seen before was dogging her steps.

Oh, he was good-looking enough, as Marie, Rosa and Suzanne were quick to exclaim over. Broad shouldered, fair-haired, a ready smile. Captain of the King's Archers. A man any woman would be delighted to have fawning over her.

But he was _not_ Claude Frollo. And though Esmeralda was grateful for his coins, she wished he would stop trying to insinuate himself into her world.

As if Fate were daring her to protest its choices, a large, gloved hand landed on her tambourine, stopping her reflections. "You're taking the rest of the night off." It was not a request, but a command. "Come with me."

Esmeralda sighed. But fighting him would only bring trouble of the kind gypsies could ill afford, so she acquiesced, giving him a gracious smile. "Since you insist, Captain, it would be my pleasure." Djali bleated his negative opinion of that, and she shot him a glare. He glowered back at her from under his horns.

"Phoebus, Esmeralda. Call me Phoebus," he said firmly, negligently tossing a further handful of coins – more than they would make for the rest of the evening if they kept playing – into the hat next to where Djali skipped merrily. "And leave the goat," he added as Djali began following them. Esmeralda narrowed her eyes briefly, but knelt in front of her pet.

"Stay here. Pierre will get you home," she told the animal, nodding at the flutist. Djali favored Phoebus with his dirtiest look before pointedly turning his face upwards to Frollo's balcony and _meh-eh-eh-ing_ plaintively. "I know," she whispered into his fur, "but he's not available."

She allowed the captain to place an arm around her waist and steer towards the square.

No one wrapped in the drama of the street below was aware of the slender shape that emerged on the gallery to watch her demure retreat, nor did they see the lightning-swift flicker of anger on the usually serene face as the captain settled a possessive hand on her hip.

888

She had not returned.

After her dance, after the quiet dismissal from her tent, after she had to _know _that she had achieved her goal, that he was not indifferent to her, she had not returned.

He could see her from the windows of Notre-Dame, plying her trade as ever, spinning in circles to the haunting sound of an expertly-played flute and the sprinkling notes of her tambourine.

Then, as he emerged on his balcony a fortnight after the Festival, he saw the captain, broad, muscular, and young, stop her dance with a hand on her instrument. He saw her lips move in a smile, watched as the archer pulled her away, a wealth of coins tumbling carelessly from his fingers as he wrapped an arm around her waist.

Something cold seized Frollo's gut and spread outwards as their strikingly opposing heads – the enchanting black and intruding gold – disappeared into the crowd, and icy fingers of envy clawed into his chest, cutting off his breath.

_Fool_, he berated himself harshly. _Is it not better this way? That she should find another? Did you not tell her yourself that her desire for you was hopeless? Did you not beg God to allow you to pass this most difficult of trials?_

His Lord had listened. The girl had, finally, absolved herself of her wayward passion, and was finding comfort in the arms of another—

_Arms of another…_ But that line of thinking had led to an unbidden swarm of images, as if his lower nature had been waiting for him to brave such territory, and had sprung a vivid trap.

_It is for the best_, he reminded himself, and forced the door of such thoughts closed. _She has removed temptation, and things will be as they ever were._

The idea offered him little consolation, but he did not examine the emptiness within himself too closely, or allow himself to hear the quiet inner voice that inclined towards regret.

888

The Seine was remarkable at this time of day. The first time she had seen Frollo was when he had been studying it so intently while praying, and Esmeralda had to admit that if Phoebus' attentions were welcome in any way, it was because he, too, had a weakness for the play of the sunset's light on the river, and she felt almost as if she were in the presence of her desired Archdeacon as well, gazing at that which he found beautiful.

Her eyes fixed by the shafts of gold sparkling on the water, by the reflection streaming pink clouds, thoughts so consumed once again by the memory of Frollo's face when she had danced for him, she almost didn't hear Phoebus' voice change tenor. As it was, it was when he stopped them, and stood in front of her, clasping both of her hands between his larger ones that she really paid attention.

"Will you marry me?"

She stared at him. _Marry _him?

_You thought he was taking you for these pretty walks just for fun, petite seour? _she could hear Clopin's mocking voice echo in her ears as surely as if he were there. _What did you expect?_

_Not this_, she cried to her conscience. _Not so soon. Not when_…not when her days were still consumed by longing for another, her dreams by long, deft hands that made her ache with their touch.

Phoebus' light eyes shone with confidence, his hold on her hands tightly controlling. He fully anticipated her 'yes'.

Fury flared. He was so certain of his irresistibility? He should have courted one of her sighing friends. "I'm sorry," she said coolly, stepping away from him, yanking her fingers from his grasp, "I can't."

Shock made the first appearance, rapidly ceding to anger and jealousy. "You _can't_? I believe I made my intentions plain, Esmeralda. I am seeking a wife."

"I told you at the time that I wished you luck, sir," she parried quickly, recalling that conversation.

"And I have had it." He gentled his voice. "You are everything I want – beautiful, intelligent, and talented. Fine qualities in a wife."

"Phoebus," she started awkwardly, holding up a hand to stall him as he came toward her again, "I'm sorry…you are a good man, and perhaps I should have told you at first…" she nerved herself, breathed in deeply and looked him in the eye. He would not want her after her confession, which would be a relief. Men could not accept the blow to their pride that she was about to deal. "I could not truly credit that the Captain of the King's Archers would want to wed a gypsy, and I thought it did not matter until now…but I can't marry you because my heart belongs to another."

He stared at her, dumbfounded and struggling to keep his suddenly-hot temper in check. His men had investigated – discreetly, of course – and had told him without hesitation that there was no one in her life. Could she have hidden the truth so well? "Another who has not cared about seeing you on my arm every night for the past month?" he managed sardonically.

Her mouth curled upwards slightly at that, and a sixth sense told her not to turn her glance back to the cathedral soaring into the sky behind them. "He has my heart, sir. I do not have his."

At this statement, the soldier in front of her visibly relaxed. Like a pendulum swinging the other way, she felt her frustration rising. She knew what he would say before his lips started to move.

"Then look elsewhere." He captured her face in his hands, almost brimming with excitement as he saw his new angle. "Look before you. An ambitious man with the capacity to see you seated next to duchesses one day who wants _you_ to be his wife. This other fellow is blind if he cannot see your beauty."

_Not blind, though I am sure he has wished it_, Esmeralda thought. "It would be dishonest to promise to you what is given elsewhere," she said slowly.

"Then do not worry about marriage now," he said magnanimously. He pressed a kiss to her forehead. She endured it patiently. It would not do to anger this man. The Captain of the King's Archers was a respected position, and thousands of her people could pay the price for her offending him. Her current delay was but for the moment. She would have to find some way to distract him permanently – perhaps one of her own dear friends would be willing to engage him and turn his interest.

"You are kind," she murmured, and he looked pleased.

"Who is it?" he asked, almost amicably as they began walking again. But she distrusted his light tone, and merely shrugged.

"I don't want to talk about it. It pains me – and now that I know your intention to be serious, it would hurt you, too." When his sideways glance told her that he was going to press the point, she summoned tears. "Please, Phoebus, I beg you, don't make me speak of him." In a gallant show of acquiescing, he fell silent and reclaimed his hold on her waist, pulling her against him as they continued to walk.

She did not fight him, though she wished with every vibrant fiber of her being that it was another man at her side.

888

It was late March, spring appearing in the green leaves lining the boulevards, when Phoebus inadvertently discovered the answer to his question.

Esmeralda heard the child's scream of pain, followed by total silence, from across the square. She threw down her tambourine and ran.

As she approached, she saw it was Roxas, one of the sharp-eyed lads who whistled in warning when the city guards approached. He had tumbled from his perch above one of the stone saints attached to the cathedral, and was lying on the street, his left foot at a ghastly, unnatural angle.

The citizens of the city flowed around him in a wide berth, warded off by the dark robes of a man she could identify without needing to see his face.

"Breathe, my son," the Archdeacon was counseling in his slow, rich voice, one pale hand under Roxas' sweaty head. He was trembling with pain, but his dark eyes were fastened intently on Frollo's face. "Keep breathing. I know it hurts, but it's only an ankle. It can be mended."

"Claude!" She dropped to her knees next to her lookout, taking his hand as Frollo's head rose, his eyes meeting hers over the boy.

"Esmeralda," he greeted her quietly. Roxas grimaced in pain.

"I fell," he murmured to her in weak explanation.

"I know. We are lucky the Archdeacon was here." Her gaze was fixed on the child, but she could feel Frollo's eyes on her.

"Is there anyone who can set it?" she asked him quietly, indicating Roxas' ankle. There were healers amongst her people, but the Cour des Miracles was a long way from Notre-Dame, and in addition to the Seine, she would have to ford two smaller tributaries, carrying Roxas the whole way.

"Father Maurice," Frollo said, tilting his head at the church behind them. His long fingers ghosted over her knuckles, turning her head. "I will bring him." She turned her hand over to catch his and squeeze briefly in gratitude.

"Thank you," she whispered. Frollo rose, and she re-arranged herself so that Roxas' head could rest in her lap.

"He's nice," the boy said with the artless truthfulness of his age.

"He is, isn't he? We are lucky to have such an Archdeacon," she answered. She saw tears streaking sideways from Roxas' eyes, and sought a distraction. "Were you at the Festival this year?" she asked, knowing he had been.

"Oh yes!" he answered enthusiastically, grinning despite his pain.

"What did you like best?"

"The cakes! The baker was giving out sweet cakes soaked in honey. Or maybe the masks. No! It was when Monsieur Geraldieu tripped over the stack of pies…" He kept rambling, jumping from incident to accident to prank as she had hoped he would.

Frollo arrived a few minutes later with a round priest huffing behind him.

"Fell?" Father Maurice asked quietly, so as not to interrupt the boy's flow. Esmeralda nodded, her eyes never leaving her charge. "Good trick, distracting him. Nasty break," Father Maurice told her, mouth tight as he reached for the foot and gently prodded it with his fingers. Roxas gasped in pain, gaze shooting to the priest. "Keep him talking," Maurice ordered. "This will hurt."

"You were in the middle of a story about the blacksmith and a horse," Frollo quickly prompted Roxas, squatting next to Esmeralda and laying a hand on his abdomen to keep him from flailing.

"Yes…" Tears had started again, but Roxas was nine – old enough to understand what they were doing, adult enough to gamely play along. "My little brother wanted to give the horse an apple—"

He twisted convulsively as Maurice pulled gently, moving his bones back into alignment. Esmeralda held down his shoulders, Frollo kept his hand on Roxas' stomach. "Keep telling it," the Archdeacon encouraged. Roxas panted, panic gracing his dark eyes. "Don't forget to breathe. In and out. Deeply. It hurts, but Father Maurice is very skilled, and it will be over in a moment. Breathe and tell me about your brother."

Roxas' chest shuddered as he inhaled, but he did his best to obey, his childish voice cracking as the priest at his ankle began to wrap the break.

Shoulders touching, the Archdeacon and the gypsy woman knelt side-by-side over the child, neither looking at the other, both consummately aware of the current that surged from body to body as they encouraged Roxas to continue his steady stream of stories.

Across the square, Phoebus rode up on Achilles to find the object of his desires gone from her customary place. "Where is she today?" he asked Pierre, frowning. She had confessed to loving another a scant five weeks ago, and though the captain was not inclined to give up the chase, she had not relented, and fear stirred an ugly suspicion. Was she with this man to whom she had given her heart? Even if he did not love her in return?

Pierre pointed across the square. He knew Esmeralda was entirely indifferent to the blond man, but the captain's devotion had kept the city guard off their backs for weeks. One did not look such a gift horse in the mouth. "I think she's over there."

Phoebus turned his mount and followed the gypsy's finger. Squinting into the shadows next to the cathedral, he could see a body and two priests, both kneeling…there she was, also on her knees, gazing intently at the unfortunate in the street.

He was not yet close enough to hear their exchange as the round priest closest to him directed a question at the ground and received an answer. Alive, then. What he had taken for a corpse was a still-living being. But Phoebus was focused entirely on Esmeralda, pleased with this overt display of compassion. Another excellent quality in a wife for a man of his position.

The second priest – the Archdeacon! – was crouched next to her, a hand on the person in the dust. As he watched, Frollo retreated slightly, Esmeralda leaning forward to heave them up.

It was a boy, Phoebus could see now, not yet ten, by the weedy look of him, and his face was pale under the dark skin of his origins. He pinched his eyes shut in pain as he struggled to sit up and failed, tumbling back against the still-kneeling Esmeralda, sending her off-balance.

Frollo reacted reflexively, catching her, an arm around her shoulders to brace her, his other hand flying back to the boy, holding both gypsies in his embrace.

Esmeralda's head dropped back against the priest's shoulder, and she met his glance with a grateful, rueful smile.

Phoebus saw red. A sweeping rage that exceeded anything he'd managed to unleash on the infidels in the Holy Land savaged him, holding him in place.

Her green eyes sparkled as she met the older man's gaze, and her whole face, so polite and correct when she spoke with him, softened, warming like butter melting in the sun as she nestled instinctively into his arm. _This_, then, was the man she had spoken of. The man who held her heart.

Instinctively, Phoebus' head snapped to the priest. Though Frollo knelt in profile, there was no mistaking the equally gentle cast to his features, the intimacy of their locked eyes, only inches apart, or the quietly possessive, protective curl of his hand about her shoulder.

There was an aura of family about the trio for a moment, a sense of completion that began in his eyes and ended in hers – or perhaps it was the other way round.

It seemed he was neither a eunuch nor made of stone.

Then the round priest moved, Frollo was distancing himself while helping her stand, and she was lifting the boy to throw an arm around her neck so he could hobble along.

Their expressions, now scrupulously schooled to propriety, had told a tale of restrained yearning. Despite her provocative dance, and the tableau they had just unwittingly created, there was no scandal here.

But if she continued to seek his company, by God, Phoebus would ensure the entire city thought there was.

888

"It's Archdeacon Frollo."

Esmeralda missed a half step, which she compensated for by taking an extra-long stride. His tone brooked no argument, nor did it invite further conversation. She held her tongue.

Phoebus grabbed her shoulders, spinning her to face him. "The man you love. It's the Archdeacon. Admit it!"

She looked away. How did he know? Did it even matter that he did? There was nothing to know. The most Frollo had ever touched her was to support her while picking up Roxas yesterday.

"It's of no consequence, Phoebus, he doesn't—"

"Do you think me _blind_?" Phoebus hissed, struggling to contain the mass of jealous fury that threatened to erupt. He still wanted this woman. He could not scare her. "I saw the way he looks at you. Like some God-forbidden apple he's dying to take a bite from!"

"Phoebus!" she wrenched away from him angrily. "He wouldn't—"

"You are _not _to see him." A cold determination had settled over the archer's features, frightening her worse than his rage.

"You don't own me," she spat back.

A smirk curled the edge of his mouth, and her stomach sank. "No? Let me put it this way. As a…favor…to you, I have asked my men to leave your kind alone. Imagine what would happen if I…reversed that policy." Her large eyes widened. "Even the Archdeacon is hardly untouchable. His reputation keeps him where he is – and must be completely above reproach, or even the hint of impropriety. The wrong word, in the wrong ear…"

Her eyes widened in horror. "You wouldn't…"

He studied her impassively. "You lied to me. You told me he felt nothing for you. That is clearly untrue. So now, we will come to an understanding in a more straightforward way." He moved to wrap his arm around her, pulling her to him and gently brushing the hair away from her face. "Marry me, and this is forgotten. I love you completely, Esmeralda, and you will want for nothing as my wife. You do not need him – and you will come to see that in time."

He turned and glanced up at the cathedral, her beautiful bell towers visible from all corners of the city. He stepped away from her, deliberately exposing her again to the chilly spring air. "Or you and your friends are in for a very hard time. And the Archdeacon will find himself disgraced, publically humiliated, and driven from Paris."

She stared at him numbly, feeling the foundation of her whole world crack. This was the end of the road. Rosa and Marie had both made fully-fledged assaults to gain his notice. He had brushed them aside as if they were no more than the flies that swarmed his horse. _How _had he learned it was Frollo? When would he have seen them together in any setting that made her feelings clear?

That curiosity was swiftly thrust aside. Phoebus had drawn the correct conclusion, however he had gone about it, and was now waiting for her answer.

There was no choice. None at all. Her people. Claude Frollo. If the price was merely her marriage, who was she not to pay? The only man she wanted could never wed her, even if he wished to. Did it matter whether she married this arrogant prig or one of her own who would be equally unable to satisfy her? At least Phoebus offered protection to the gypsies, granting them immunity to continue living according to their own culture and creed.

"I accept," she said steadily. "I will become your wife."

"And you will not see the Archdeacon again."

She bit the inside of her lip until she tasted blood. But she could not risk so many on the whims of this jealous, mercurial man she had just promised herself to.

"I will not see him again."

888

Frollo knelt on the stone in front of the statue of the Virgin, his eyes closed against an unexpected pain.

For a moment yesterday, sitting with her over the child, his arm around her as she fell, the way she smiled at him when he caught her, he had felt…complete. Whole in the way the men of the city, with their wives and their children, must feel. Cherished, wanted and needed.

_Why?_ he wondered bitterly. _If this is marriage, why are we forbidden from it? To have a son to raise in God, to have a wife with whom to serve Him…this is condemned. But why?_

He felt as if he were addressing Mary, more than her Son. After all, their Lord had never married, but Mary had wed Saint Joseph, and together, they had raised that Most Holy Child.

He had to confess to himself, now, the truth he had battled for so long. He loved Esmeralda – not just as a man desiring a beautiful woman, but as his compliment, the other half he had never sought out. He thought ironically that when he had been able to reduce his feelings for her to mere lust, it had been easier to ignore and control them as instincts unbecoming of a man of God.

But now there was so much more tangled in his emotional equation. Ever since the incident in the tent – strange, that the effect of the Festival was not the fiery dance she had performed for him, but the aftermath of his clumsiness and her absolute kindness – he had been unable to fully discount her.

And then the Captain of the King's Archers had taken an interest, and she seemed to do nothing to dissuade him… But the look in her eyes when he caught her yesterday had been real. He _knew_, in some indefinable way, that he was the only man in her line of sight, even though her captain had come thundering up on his charger not a minute later.

The Archdeacon shook his head violently, as if physically trying to dislodge his thoughts. What was, was. The papal decrees of Rome were not about to change so that he could have a gypsy bride. And the idea of simply having her, of keeping her in shadow, even though it would sate some part of his desire and hers, sickened him. If he could not have her honestly, he would not have her at all. His vows were sacred, and she deserved better than such hypocrisy.

He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, lifting his face to the impassive Virgin and her haloed Child. They had both endured unimaginable trials with stoicism. He had to endeavor to do the same.

888

"Where are you going?" Pierre hissed as Esmeralda flung a long cloak over herself, hiding her thick hair and gathering up a cane that she immediately leaned on heavily. The transformation from lithe young dancer to aching old woman had taken less than thirty seconds, and, unless someone ripped off the cloak, was completely convincing.

"Somewhere. And Pierre," she glared at him from under her hood, "if you tell Phoebus where I've gone, I'll gut you myself."

Pierre rolled his eyes and deliberately looked at the cathedral. "In there?"

"Yes." She raised her eyebrows. "I'm serious about gutting you."

He snorted. "You're sick in bed, at home. Got it. I'll get Rosa to come dance."

She smiled, then. "Thank you!" she whispered, and began to hobble across the square.

She knew she had promised not to go near him. She had no doubts about Phoebus' viciousness, or his willingness to carry through on every threat he'd uttered. But she woke up burning with the remembrance of the way he'd held her, and was driven to distraction by her memory of his kindness to Roxas, of the look in his eyes when he'd kept her from tumbling backwards into the street.

She had to tell him, even though she dreaded the conversation. He deserved to know that she had sworn herself to another.

Phoebus had forced her hand three weeks ago, and this was her first chance to find Frollo. The King's Archers were practicing in the Université today, and with Pierre silenced, her fiancé would have no way of knowing that she had been in the square at all that morning.

She entered the church, stumping and muttering like an old woman on her way towards a small chapel when she stopped, and glanced at the stairs to the bell tower. This was not a conversation she wanted to have out in the open where others could hear. It was far too intimate, and any eavesdropping ears would beg the question as to why a poor commoner would come to tell the Archdeacon such news.

Her decision made, she slipped inside the tower, picked up her cane and gathered her skirts, and raced up the spiral staircase, shedding her disguise as rapidly as she had donned it.

"Quasimodo?" she called tentatively. Wooden beams creaked overhead and she saw his ugly, curious face appear.

"Esmeralda?" He looked surprised. "What is it? Why are you here?"

"Can you help me?" she called.

"Of course. If I can," he dropped down two beams and landed lightly at her feet. "What do you need?"

"Can you bring Archdeacon Frollo here?"

He cocked his lopsided head, and nodded slowly. "Yes." He started for the stairs, only to turn back around. "My father is quite busy. He might not come immediately."

"I will wait for him," she replied firmly. "If you are willing to share your space with me."

"Oh yes," he nodded, and smiled, and blushed, and left.

She waited. She waited long after the hunchback had returned, until the noon-day bells had to be rung. Quasimodo handed her cotton for her ears to save her hearing when he began pulling the thick ropes. She was grateful for his foresight. In the city, the peal of the bells sounded majestic and grand. In the tower, they rebounded and vibrated like thunder, shaking her so that she felt her bones would quiver right out of her skin.

She waited through the hot peak of the sun at its zenith, through the faintly cooler wind that indicated it was beginning its decline.

It was mid-afternoon when the door opened, and his familiar shadow fell across the floor.

"Esmeralda?" Frollo's voice carried on the deck below the ladder.

"Claude," she rose to greet him as he swiftly ascended.

Once they were both standing under the great iron bells, silence descended, resoundingly awkward. Frollo felt as if this were the one woman he need not hide from, and, simultaneously, that there was nothing more dangerous than standing here in her presence. Esmeralda dreaded speaking – both for what she had to say, and the knowledge that after she spoke her piece, she would have to stay away from him.

"I have missed seeing you," she finally opened simply, and he could see the truth in her face.

"And I, you," he admitted. "I…regret…some of the things I said before. They were unnecessarily cruel."

She shook her head. "No. They were true. They're still true. I'm sorry I pursued you."

He was paradoxically both sorry and wholly grateful for her perseverance. Sorry for the loss of his peace of mind, grateful that she had awakened this beautiful, consuming part of himself he had consigned to non-existence. "Are you really?" he asked her, and this time, it was his turn to step forward.

She turned her face aside, and he was surprised to see tears leak from the corners of her eyes. "Yes. Now I am."

"Why? What has changed?"

She took a deep breath and nerved herself to say it. "I am engaged. To Phoebus de Châteaupers, the Captain of the King's Archers."

Once again, she had succeeded in rendering him breathless. But this wasn't the breathlessness of anticipation, it was the collapse of his lungs, too pained to draw air.

"You are?" he heard his voice as if from a long way off. "But…I thought…" _I thought you were in love with me!_ some part of him cried. He refused to say it aloud. He already knew the captain wanted her – that had been plain from the instant he'd spied them from his balcony. He had spent months telling himself it was for the best.

The accident with the gypsy boy had not changed what was. But his realizations from that day did lead him to another, more important question.

Mastering his own devastating, senseless, disappointment, he closed the gap between them and gently cupped her face in his hands, forcing her eyes up to meet his. "Do you want this?"

Pulsing heat arced from the tips of his fingers to her slanting cheekbones, and she found her fingers grasping the front of his robe emphatically.

"How can you ask me that?" she demanded. "You know I love—"

"Don't," he interrupted her, and his thumb brushed softly over her mouth to silence her, blue eyes tight with suppressed pain. "Don't say it. It only makes it worse."

Jade-green eyes studied the sky-blue as if seeing through windows into his soul. He let her, returning her penetrative glance with his own, neither moving from their strange intimacy. A short drop of his head would close the centimeters between them and bring his mouth to hers, but Archdeacon and gypsy remained still until he slowly lifted his hands from her face, she released her clutch on his robe, and both took a step back from the abyss, trembling.

"I thought…I wanted you to know," she said hollowly.

He inclined his head. The news was unwelcome, but he was thankful that she had told him before the wedding actually occurred. "I am…grateful…that you brought me such tidings yourself."

Absolute stillness filled the space again. Frollo knew that somewhere in the tower, his foster-son had probably witnessed the entirety of this tumultuous interview, and an explanation would be necessary.

Esmeralda hesitated to leave. She had done what she had set out to do, and he had handled the news graciously – indeed, more courteously than he had ever received her advances – even though she could feel the weight of the sorrow her words had brought him.

But this time, when she walked out of the cathedral, she would never be back. And suddenly, promise or not, that seemed too much to bear.

"Is it possible for us to be friends?" she blurted. Frollo raised his eyebrows.

"Ours has never been a friendship, Esmeralda," he said slowly. From the day he had looked down from his prayers to see her wide green eyes, passion had flowed between them, at first denied, but now the guttering ember had been fanned into a full-blown flame and the heat was impossible to ignore.

Friendship for priests tended to be limited to their own class. They were a caste apart from the laymen of the city and the nobility alike. A man of the Church tended to have no other friends save others of his own ilk.

Certainly not a woman he had feelings for.

"We can change that."

Such a thing was unlikely. Love, once brought to life, rarely died so easily, but he was intrigued in spite of himself. Risky though it was, he would prefer not to lose this woman he had grown to care about so deeply. "How would you propose making a…friendship work?"

Her head cocked almost absently as she thought. "Teach me something," she said finally. Her eyes lit up. "Teach me to read!"

Her raw happiness brought a smile to his stern mouth. He had known she was intelligent, it was part of his attraction to her, but her demand indicated an understanding of the Church's structure he didn't know she possessed. To spend time with him in a way that outsiders deemed valid, she would have to be seen to be learning from him. The only remaining problem was that women didn't—

"I'll come as a boy," she announced, as if reading his mind. "I can borrow the proper clothing from Clopin."

"I believe that will be an…acceptable compromise," Frollo said before he could allow his common sense to deny her, and his smile lingered. "When?"

"Every morning?" she asked.

He shook his head both regretfully and with some alarm. "That would be too obvious." And he wasn't sure he could endure her presence daily without cracking. "A student is seen no more than two times in a week. And Sundays we have mass."

"Then I will see you in three days," she said lightly, starting for the ladder down, leaving suddenly easy with the knowledge she would return.

"French or Latin?" he detained her.

Her laughter echoed like a lighter note from the bells surrounding them. "What would I do with Latin? French, please." And with that, she flounced down the ladder, turning to bestow a brilliant smile upon him before throwing on her cloak again and becoming an old woman.

"You have made her very happy, Father." Quasimodo materialized at his side. The hunchback glanced side-long at the man who had raised him. "And it has given you joy."

Frollo turned his focus downward to the awkward man beside him, and laid a hand on the bell ringer's protruding back. "What it might give me is a great deal of trouble," he said quietly. But the image of her smile, of the way her lips had parted unconsciously when his thumb had skimmed over her mouth, made it impossible for him to regret his impulsiveness.

888

The priest did not recognize the well-trimmed young man who sidled up to him, looking for all the world as if he had arrived straight from one of the merchant's respectable houses in the Villé. Raising his eyes from his book, Frollo started to ask him what he needed when he saw the flash of sunlight in unique green eyes and noticed the dark shade of the skin that had nothing to do with Notre-Dame's long shadows.

He both admired the thoroughness of her disguise – she even moved like the young men of the city – and felt repulsed by it. Where was the vivacious gypsy woman with her toss of raven's wing hair in this reserved, respectable representative of the city's burgeoning middle class?

His expression must have been plain, for she smiled silently, amusement flaring in her gaze as if she wished to laugh, but didn't dare. It was enough to break the boundary. Her disturbing dress was no more than a costume, that they might play at friendship.

"I believe I have a lesson with you, Father," she said quietly, her voice pitched low enough to fool a passerby.

"Indeed. Follow me." He led her to one of the many side vestibules. It would prove private enough to work without interruption, public enough that he was accessible to Notre-Dame if needed.

His message was clear: the physical affection of their last two encounters was not to make an appearance here. "It is peculiar to see you dressed so," he murmured as they seated themselves on the hard wooden bench, "and very disconcerting that you do it so well."

"I am a man of many talents," she teased, and he allowed a brief, close-lipped smile to escape before turning to business. He pulled out a primer, on which was written the alphabet and angled it in such a way that they could both study it.

"A," his long finger traced the spidery lines of the letter. He waited for her to repeat after him, which she did, copying his movement with her own hand.

Her light linen fabric brushing his heavy woolen robe, warmth penetrating cloth where they pressed together at shoulder, hip and knee, Esmeralda and Frollo bent themselves seriously to the task that they had seized upon as an excuse to continue seeing each other.

888

"You are cheerful, ma cherié," Clopin settled himself at her fire, long legs folding gracefully into sitting position. "Can it be that you are actually falling in love with your gallant captain?"

The observer asked the question deliberately, and was not disappointed with what he learned. She startled slightly, then laughed. "Phoebus? No, I don't think so."

Clopin sat back, studying her. There was no doubt that her energy – purposeful, peaceful and above all, joyful, belonged to a woman very much in love. Everyone at the court knew the silver band around her left ring finger indicated her status as affianced to the good-looking captain, and those who knew her less well, who had not witnessed her despair over his attentions, would naturally assume that her radiant happiness went hand-in-hand with this good fortune.

But he knew her far better than that. Phoebus had the same chances of sparking so vivid a reaction in Esmeralda as a snowball had of surviving in high summer. Therefore, it had to be someone else.

"Someone has put that secretive smile on your face. Archdeacon Frollo, then," he said casually. At this, she shot him a glare, marring her glow. He raised his hands in mock surrender. "I am only guessing. But it seems I have found the cause."

"Keep your voice down, Clopin," she hissed, "or I shall not share my dinner with you."

"I am wounded, little sister, that you would deny me sustenance," he riposted with mock dismay. Seriousness invaded next, wiping out levity. "It is rumored that you are forbidden to see him. So how – what is that?" he spied a scrap of his clothing – one of his costumes that had been missing for several weeks – piled at the end of her bed.

"Nothing!" she replied with the swiftness of the guilty.

"Nothing?" He lunged for it, his longer arms easily bypassing her as he tugged it out. "These are _my _trousers! And my shirt!" he cried as he found a second vanished garment. "And belt! Esme…what have you been doing?"

"He is teaching me to read," she replied unabashedly now that he had caught her out. "I wear boy's clothing so that no one will suspect."

Clopin's eyes travelled to her masses of long black hair. "It goes under a cap, and I bind," she gestured to her chest. The other gypsy blanched.

"You go to him as a boy? Don't you think that's…peculiar, Esme?"

She blinked, realized what he was insinuating, and whacked him sharply on the arm with her wooden spoon. "It's _not _like that. He's the Archdeacon, Clopin. He is truly only teaching me."

"You go to Notre-Dame and _read?_" Clopin asked incredulously, trying to keep his voice down.

"Yes," she answered simply. "We are…friends. That's all."

A lie, and she knew he knew it even as she said it. Though Frollo would not reach out to her overtly, their bodies found a way of touching every minute she was there, tension stringing the air they breathed in unison. Going over the combinations of letters – silent and spoken – that resulted in the sounds of their shared language, his fingertips would brush over the back of her hand as they traced the shape together, setting her heartbeat madly thrumming within her the entire time she sat at his side, and she could hear the slight shortness of his breath when their eyes met, both warming under the intensity of his gaze.

"Keep your eyes on the book," he counseled her with a slight smile when she lifted her head to study his aquiline profile.

"Friends?" Clopin pulled her back to the present, seeing her quiet, private smile at something – an incident or a person – he could not see. "Esme…"

Green eyes flashed fire at the warning in his tone. "You would deny me this?" she demanded.

"I would see you joined to Claude Frollo in front of the whole city if that would make you happy," he returned spiritedly, unable to bring himself to further dampen her delight. Reality would soon do that for her, as her marriage crashed in around her, real and cold. "I just fear for your safety. The captain is a jealous man – do not provoke him."

"We are careful," she replied with a daring grin.

His ready smile faded as she looked back to her pot contentedly, concern creasing his brow. With a man like Phoebus de Châteaupers, was it possible to be careful enough?

888

Clopin had every right to be worried, though none of them would know that until it was too late.

Phoebus had noticed the shift in his bride-to-be since he had forced her hand. He had been prepared for a storm of tears, a little sulking, some anger, a bit of denial, and then a turnaround as she came to understand the magnificent chance he was offering her.

There had been no tears. Instead, there had come a glacial fury that could not be reduced to the childish description of "sulking". Esmeralda had walked away from him without another word after swearing never to see Frollo again, disappearing into the streets of Paris.

Her attitude towards him the next day when he had seen her dancing had been coolly tolerant. She spoke to him with almost offensive politeness – doubly insulting since he had witnessed the fiery glance she turned on the older priest – and never quite met his eye.

She had bowed to his wish to see her in the evenings when he finished training his men for the day, but answered his gentle queries with monosyllables and never spoke if he did not speak first.

Phoebus kept a tight rein on his impatience at her ire. He had, after all, forbidden her from something she thought she wanted. He was in no doubt that the beautiful gypsy would warm to him eventually, but she had already proven that when he pushed her, she elusively slipped further away from him.

Then, three weeks after their confrontation, she had suddenly changed. Not the day-by-day improvement he had expected – a smile here, a gesture there, a stray word that told him she was beginning to forgive him – but a full-out transformation, as if another spirit animated her body.

Her wintry countenance had abruptly thawed, giving way to a woman more open-hearted than she had ever been, even when he had first started courting her. Spring in Paris roared toward summer, and she accepted to be taken for rides in the countryside on Achilles, picnics in the parks of the Louvre and walks in the magnificent gardens of the Tuileries.

But there had been no love blossoming there. At first, he had been pleased that she was willing, now, to make an effort, to become comfortable with him before she became his wife.

It had not taken him long to notice the faint air of satisfaction that clung to her like a shimmering cloak – an emotion that felt like sandpaper under his hands, rough, but not blatantly visible. Her smile had a mysterious cast when caught unawares, as if it contained a riddle he was too dense to unravel, and when he studied her surreptitiously, her eyes were invariable staring into the distance, unfocused, her lips curved enigmatically as she studied a scene he could not see.

Dom Claude Frollo. The priest had the prize the captain was seeking. And somehow, despite her promise to him, Phoebus was convinced that Frollo had found a way to bind Esmeralda ever more thoroughly to himself.

The captain gritted his teeth in the late spring thunderstorm as he paid a stable boy at the inn across from the cathedral. If Notre-Dame did not reveal her secret tonight, he would go to the bishop.

888

"Gypsy girl?" The rotund priest frowned at him as he paused in his task of lighting candles along the nave. "What gypsy—?...You mean the mother of that young lad whose ankle I set?"

"Yes," Phoebus confirmed quickly, allowing the assumption of their relationship to pass unremarked. Had Frollo encouraged the deception, or had this priest come to the wrong conclusion on his own?

"She has not returned here," the father answered thoughtfully. "Does she need help? Is her boy healing?"

The captain had not thought to ask her. "I believe so. I was wondering if she'd come to see the Archdeacon?"

At this, the priest slanted him a puzzled glance and resumed setting flame to wick. "No. I've not seen her in here at all. She customarily remains outside to ply her trade."

Phoebus could tell the man was growing irritated at his seemingly senseless questions. Forcing his face into a polite smile, he retreated, a heated frown replacing insincere geniality as he stepped back into the rain.

The priests claimed to have witnessed nothing. But the Archdeacon was well-liked by his underlings, even if he was intimidating, and Phoebus knew he couldn't trust them to notice what was under their noses, or be honest with him if they had.

He would need full access to the cathedral without Claude Frollo knowing if he was to prove his suspicions.

It was time to appeal to a higher authority.

888

"Archdeacon Frollo? Surely you jest."

The Bishop of Paris, Louis de Beaumont, was a tall, well-built man gone very much to seed. Phoebus could still make out evidence of powerful shoulders in the broad back, and an easy muscularity that would make any horseman green with envy, but years of church dinners and rich wines had rounded his figure, and now his belly preceded him into any room.

"The man was _born _with a eunuch's instincts for women as far as I can tell," Louis continued with a faint frown, sipping from his glass. "He makes a wonderful priest. The people of Paris have thrived under his care. No," he set his drink down decisively, "I have no reason or desire to investigate the man or threaten his office. He has been a model for our younger brethren for years."

"I tell you, that is no longer true," Phoebus insisted. "He has laid hands on at least one woman – my fiancée, as a matter of fact – and still swans about as if untouchable. I beg you, Father, some action must be taken, or the people of Paris will end up acting for you." The Bishop shot the young man a glance, but the soldier appeared unconscious of the threat he had just uttered. It seemed that Phoebus was sincerely concerned.

"You have chosen a gypsy bride, no?" Louis asked calmly. "Has it occurred to you that her kind do not treat fidelity as we do? That, perhaps, _she _approached him?"

Phoebus recalled all-too-clearly the dance Esmeralda had performed for the archdeacon in the Festival. He had little doubt, knowing Esmeralda, listening to her confession, _"He has my heart. I do not have his,"_ that the Bishop had the right of it.

But Claude Frollo _had _to be removed. He had warned her. She had broken her promise. Now they would pay the price for her faithlessness. And, inexorably, with the priest out of the way, she would finally come to him. "She wouldn't," he lied firmly. "I know her well, Father. She is not the type." The second part of his statement was all-too-true. She was content to let him have an arm around her waist or shoulders, but any further intimacy she disdained. Her hand was given to a man who did not have her heart, and she would not betray the latter for the former, no matter what the law proclaimed proper.

Louis watched him from under hooded eyes. Young love. Or lust, as was probably the case. The Bishop had seen much of men and women, and it seemed that while love between them was a rarity, lust made the world go round.

He liked Archdeacon Frollo. Claude had always been a somber man, but he was unique, his devotion absolute, or so it had always looked.

Louis sighed. He could not offend the son of Châteaupers. Phoebus' father had spared him and the Church a rather messy scandal some years back when he had still been a young priest and failed to understand the true dangers of women. All had been handled satisfactorily, and to dredge it up now…

He owed House Châteaupers a favor. He would investigate this claim, much as he disliked it.

"I will have my carriage prepared," he announced finally, draining his glass. "We go to Paris in the morning."

888

Phoebus pounced on her from behind, catching her about her waist and lifting her into the air in a show of delight. Allowing herself to play his game, she laughed, throwing her head back so that her raven locks soared out behind her in a dark aurora. She cultivated this picture, that of a handsome young couple very much in love, for the mob of Paris that formed admiring bystanders. She knew the rumor mill would feed back into the King's Archers themselves, and reinforce the image in Phoebus' mind.

"You are happy today," she remarked as he set her down.

"I am," he agreed. "I spoke to the priest two nights ago. He can marry us this Sunday!"

Esmeralda felt unexpectedly faint. Sunday? They were still six weeks from mid-summer… She forced herself to smile. "That's wonderful news!" She hoped he would attribute her weakened voice to breathless happiness, instead of the onset of despair.

So intent was she on controlling herself that the dancer failed to see the predatory gleam in Phoebus' eye, the prelude to a trap snapping shut.

888

The brilliance in her face had vanished between this morning and tonight. Clopin noticed her sitting, quiet and still, under the tapestries that formed her small square of the court.

He folded himself up next to her, equally silent. He did not have to ask, just wait.

"I will marry Phoebus on Sunday." Her voice was soft, fragile, as if she were afraid of breaking if she spoke too loudly.

Clopin said nothing, merely swept her into his embrace. They had known this day was coming. The unspoken truth that hovered over the sacred hours she had snatched with Frollo under the cathedral's arches was that, one day, she would be joined in marriage to Phoebus by one of Notre-Dame's priests, and, the instant her vows were taken, she would be irrevocably lost to the Archdeacon in every way.

"I am sorry, little sister," he murmured as he heard her harsh breathing. There were no tears, yet, but she gripped his shirt in fists so tight her knuckles whitened.

"I know," she replied. "But this…we knew it had to happen. I knew."

"You did. The kindest thing now – both for you and Frollo – is to forget him."

"Forget him? I could sooner stop my heart beating. Clopin…I love him."

The tumbler sighed. He knew, from his own eagle-eyed investigation that the priest returned her passionate feelings. But his self-discipline was iron-clad, and it had led them into a blind alley. A dead end, with only Phoebus standing at the exit, arms open in both menace and sanctuary.

"For your sanity, and his, I hope you can learn not to," he said quietly, brushing hair away from her face as she burrowed into his shoulder. He continued to stroke her locks as tears dripped at last down her cheeks, her face contorted with a misery too deep for sobs.

888

The following morning, she rose from her mattress and went to the ancient traveling trunk she hadn't moved since she was six years old. This old chest of intricately carved wood had been her mother's, and her grandmother's, and her grandmother's mother's. It had been used by all three women as they traveled in caravans through the continent, selling weaving, reading palms and dancing. Esmeralda's mother had died here, in Paris, and the trunk and its contents had become her sole possession, a place of safety – for herself, as a little girl, when she could still wedge between blankets and family heirlooms, and for objects she cherished, as she outgrew it.

Now she sorted through the piles, seeking one of the items that had been living in the trunk for longer than she had been alive…

She found a corner, pulled gently, and out it came. Roughly bound in craftsman's leather, pages painstakingly stacked and stuck, was a family history of the tales of her people, illustrated with vibrant color. The spectacular artistic talents of her fore-mothers and fathers seemed to have skipped her, but she loved the book nevertheless, and had always hoped that her own daughter would inherit the skills to continue adding to the volume.

For years, she had looked at the pictures and linked them with the long stories told around their fires, unable to read the words themselves. The language was that of the Romani, but its script was the same as French, and as she gazed at the page she had opened to, the story jumped out in sharp relief, words giving it a new form as she read it for the first time.

She closed it. She would take it today to share with Frollo, the only gift she could offer a scholar of his stature. As she had learned to read, he had brought her treatises on theology, science and medicine to slowly pick her way through, and she had come to know how deeply learned this man was, how much he loved knowledge.

These were children's stories, but they were learning in their own right, and she was certain he would appreciate it – if only because it came from her.

When she dressed, she ignored the disguise of her boy's clothing, taking with her, instead, the cloak and cane of the old woman.

She wanted to look like herself when she said goodbye.

888

She waited until the end of the day, when the vespers had been rung and the sun was casting his golden blanket over the Seine, to enter Notre-Dame.

The instant she set foot in the cathedral, she knew Frollo had seen and recognized her. A brief frown flitted across his features as their eyes met, and she made her slow, deliberate way to the belfry.

This time, she did not have long to wait amidst Quasimodo's astonishing, life-like artwork. Frollo ascended quickly and came straight to her, propriety forgone as he saw her heavy expression. He took the limp hand on the table between both of his own and knelt before her.

"Esmeralda?"

"Phoebus has set a date for our wedding. I marry in three days," she said tonelessly, closing her eyes against the blow of Frollo's anguish.

_Set a date…_the Captain of the King's Archers had originally wished to wait for high summer, well after the Feast of Pentecost. He had thought they had more time…

_And would it have been enough?_ Frollo demanded of himself, beating back grief. _Could it _ever_ be enough?_

"I see," he managed quietly.

"I came to bid you farewell," she continued, forcing her voice to steadiness and reaching for a bundle he hadn't noticed, "and to show you this."

The priest held his breath, setting sorrow aside as she carefully opened the parcel. It was a book. Its ragged but cherished cover clearly delineated it as a one-of-a-kind, home-bound book, and when she opened it, he had to bite his tongue to refrain from exclaiming. The paintings within had been done in watercolor by a master, a nuanced hand suggesting details with shadows, sweeping bright scenes with precise, fantastic colors.

This book was probably more precious to her than a church full of jewels. And she had brought it to him? "You are remarkable," he murmured, unable to express the emotion that clutched his chest.

"You taught me to read," she replied, and adjusted herself to make room for him on the bench beside her. "Who else can I share it with but you?"

To his dismay, as he seated himself beside her and squinted at the slanting script, he realized that the language was entirely unfamiliar. "What is the dialect?" he asked, plainly disappointed.

"Romani," she replied, eyes sparkling with a touch of her old humor. "You are my teacher, and have read to me. Now, it is my turn to read to you."

And she began. Her reading was still halting and slow, but he let the music of her native tongue roll over him, waiting patiently for the translation of the tales, drinking in every detail of the beautiful illustrations. He wondered briefly what it would be like to illuminate a Bible in the style of these people, their riotous colors bringing Scripture to life…

She read until the sun was sliding below the horizon, transporting him to the worlds of her people on the song of her voice. When only a sliver of light remained, he reached out to cover the fingers so carefully underlining the words she was reading.

"Come with me, before it is too late to see it," he bade her. She willingly stood, setting her book on the table, and followed him, allowing him to pull her by the hand up another series of stairs – rickety this time, and made of wood, to the very top of the bell tower.

"The view here is unmatched by any in Paris," he told her, opening the wooden door.

Esmeralda inhaled sharply. The river below them reflected elements of sun and sky, gleaming at them and throwing ripples of light onto the houses and bridges that arched over and crowded round it as it flowed, uninhibited, to the horizon. The slanted roofs of the dwellings crowding towards the cathedral rose and fell in waves of shining slate, sunlight flashing squares of fire in the panes of windows. To her left soared the spires of the palaces of the kings, to her right, the delicate steeples of the universities, abbeys and churches. All were gilded with the sunset, re-casting the city of stone in gold like the answer to the alchemists' riddle.

"Claude…" she whispered, enchanted. "This is…unbelievable." She was suddenly very aware of the hand that remained tangled in his, fingers interlaced, and she turned impulsively, wanting to share her joy with the man who had given it to her.

But though he faced out over the city, Frollo's eyes were closed to its beauty. His free hand gripped the stone balustrade, his mouth drawn and tight as if enduring lashes of some physical torture.

"Claude?" she hesitated for but a moment, happiness becoming concern, then reached up to lay her hand firmly against his cheek, turning his pale, austere face towards her. "What is it?"

The hand from the railing moved to wrap around hers, and she waited for him to peel her fingers away from his skin and distance himself, to tell her once again that it wasn't proper—

Instead, he tightened his hold, squeezing almost painfully, as if he were clinging to her to keep himself anchored to the earth. Eyes still closed, he turned his face into her hand and pressed his lips to her palm.

Esmeralda stopped breathing. The whole of her existence narrowed to the warmth of his breath on her skin, to the tingling where his mouth had touched, to the thrill of knowing that he had kissed her.

Now he moved her hand, but only to turn it and brush a kiss against the soft inside of her wrist, the pressure of his mouth so gentle it was like the flutter of a butterfly's wing.

She gasped, air rushing back into her lungs all at once, leaving her almost panting with a sudden surge of adrenaline-soaked desire, and his eyes snapped open as he freed their twined hands to seize her waist, pulling her flush against him. Devotion, deep and dark, the kind of passion that inspires a man to die for his love, glowed in his eyes. And this time, Esmeralda knew it was for her. She laced her arms around the back of his neck, grateful for his steady grip that supported her trembling knees, even as she felt the shaking of his free hand as he thrust it wildly into her hair, cupping the back of her neck, bringing her mouth to his in a completion he had been seeking since mid-winter—

Those few, searingly sweet seconds when she felt the whisper of his breath across her lips, the shudder of his body aching for her, when neither was chained by the world or the constraints that bound them, would be forever burned into them by their immediate aftermath.

His mouth never met hers. They heard pounding on the stairs, and Frollo was already releasing her, thrusting her away, when Quasimodo tore through the door, distorted face feral with distress. "Father—!"

"Esmeralda!"

"Dom Claude! Remove your hands from that woman at _once_!"

As Captain Phoebus and the Bishop of Paris raced through the now-open door on his foster-son's heels, Frollo reversed his action in a lightning-swift decision, pulling Esmeralda back and cradling her closer to him. They could not rebuild the appearance of propriety fast enough to save them, so he would hold her for the fleeting time they had left.

His blue eyes met the captain's furious gaze with a moment's grim satisfaction. His love for this woman would cost him a lifetime's achievement, but he had what the younger man so desperately wanted. Envy, wild and uncontrolled, burned in Phoebus' face, distorting the handsome features as he reached for his fiancée to tear her from the Archdeacon's grasp.

Frollo spun away, shielding her from Phoebus' hands as he glared over her head at the intruders. She wrapped her arms securely around him, alternating between glowers at her husband-to-be and searching her priest's face, green eyes imploring.

"Guards!" snapped Phoebus, clicking his fingers. Spears piled through the door next, leveled unhesitatingly at the pair.

"Arrest the Archdeacon," he ordered grimly.

"No!" Esmeralda cried, levering herself off Frollo's chest to challenge him. "Phoebus! It's not his fault!"

"Esmeralda." Frollo's deep voice in her ear commanded her full attention. "Nothing you can say will change what happens now," he continued quietly. "Whatever happens to me, I will find a way to keep you well out of it."

"But—"

"We are out of time, beloved," he whispered as they prized his arms apart and yanked her away roughly, heavy hands on her shoulders, meaty fingers bruising her wrists to keep her from struggling free as they shackled him. "You will be safe. Trust me."

"Take him downstairs. His holiness, the Bishop, will see to him," Phoebus dismissed the guards surrounding the Archdeacon. Louis de Beaumont followed them, frowning deeply and shaking his head, as if not wishing to give credence to the evidence of his eyes.

Esmeralda stared after them as they descended out of sight, pulling against her captors until Phoebus strode to the door and slammed it closed.

"I warned you," he said quietly.

"You _know_ it wasn't his doing," she hissed furiously. "He would never have—"

"And yet, he did," the captain interrupted her coldly. "There is a price he must pay to God and to Rome for his failure to remain steadfast, no matter who started it." He arched one thick eyebrow and smiled coldly as he approached her, running a hand down her face in a mockery of affection. She turned her head in denial, in anger, in a refusal to submit. "You have ruined the man you love, my dear. Perhaps your…adoration…is not something to be desired. Or envied." Her eyes snapped back to him involuntarily, a ragged gasp of pain escaping as he stepped back, still smirking.

"Six weeks, Esmeralda, and you'll be mine." He jerked his chin at the men holding her. "Take her back to the street. If she tries to enter the cathedral, do not hesitate to beat her flutist unconscious." If they thought such brutality repulsive, she could not see it in their faces as they marched her past the stricken face of Quasimodo, manhandled her through the door, down the winding flights of wooden and stone stairs, and out under the statues of Notre-Dame, where they deposited her unceremoniously at the foot of the broad steps.

"Better'n you deserve, the captain taking an interest in the likes of you," one sneered. "I'd shape up and spread my legs like a good girl if you don't want more trouble." His companion guffawed, cast a lusty glance at the gypsy and returned to the church.

In the darkened street, heedless of the curious crowd that always moved about Paris, Esmeralda sank to her knees on the unforgiving stone and stared at the cathedral that had both delighted and destroyed her.

"_You have ruined the man you love…"_ She hated the words, wanted to spit them back in Phoebus' face, rage at him…but he was right. Frollo had turned her away, gently and inexorably, months ago. If she had listened, if she had obeyed…

"…_ruined the man you love…"_

The sun was gone now, sunk into the river, and Apollo's dying rays were no longer golden. The last tendrils shooting over the horizon streaked crimson, covering the saints on the facade of the house of God with blood.

8888888888

A/N: Please let me know what you think!


	3. Part III: Exile

Disclaimer: The world of the hunchback belongs primarily to Victor Hugo and his novel, published in 1831. Other rights go to Disney, who created some of the scenes I used in this piece.

Author's Note: Enter Fleur de Lis de Gondalaurier…

Part Three: Exile

"Doctor Frollo?"

Claude Frollo lifted his head from where he had slumped wearily against his rough table. The child hovering in his doorway, backed by the late-setting, mid-summer sun, looked hesitant, and the old priest forced himself to smile in welcome.

"Enter, my…come in," he interrupted himself before the customary address could betray him. In his banishment to this tiny town, barely a village in the countryside, he had been granted one mercy.

"_Do not act as an archdeacon, and there is no reason for the people here – or even the parish priest – to know who you are and why you are here,"_ the Bishop had told him. _"Begin anew, Claude."_

Beginning anew might have had some appeal – if she could be at his side.

He fiercely slammed the door on that thought closed. Esmeralda was probably already wed to her fine-looking captain. He knew she felt nothing for the man, except now, perhaps, her indifference had been transformed into hatred. He shuddered at the thought that her bright gaiety, the brilliant, ready smile that had called to him like a siren's song, had been snuffed out by the blackest of emotions.

For his own part, Frollo could not bring himself to despise the captain. He had found in his heart bitter traces of envy, which he had done his best to eradicate. It was a slow, painful process.

But sleepless nights and hours of prayer had not cured the burning in his chest. He and Esmeralda had been ensnared in that most treacherous of traps – a condition of the heart that could not be escaped or transmuted, simply endured. She was not – could never be – his. He had known that since the day he'd laid eyes on her in the street, known it as he struggled not to fall in love with her, known it even as he'd taken her in his arms atop the glory of Notre-Dame, wanting to have – just once! – a taste of the life that was denied him, one kiss from the only woman he'd ever wanted.

His desire, his surrender to himself, had earned him excommunication and exile.

But habits of the Church died hard. He had spent his whole life in service to others and never regretted a day. Relocated to this tiny village, Frollo discovered a new reason to be grateful for the medicine he had studied in his youth. Maurice had always possessed the true flair and talent for healing, so the former Archdeacon had little practical experience, but he had been able to offer his services to the local priest when he had arrived, and in the past month, he'd had a steady stream of townsfolk and farmers come to him for old breaks and new sprains, bearing coughs and colicky infants, headaches they feared were caused by demons and stomach aches they knew were caused by food.

If their newest resident had something of the city about him, if his Latin was much better than that of the local parish priest, if his manner of walking was stately enough to be the stride of a king, the people dismissed it. He was a quiet, intense man, but a useful one, and if he seemed to live with one foot and half his brain perpetually elsewhere, it gave them something to gossip and wonder about around their fires in the evening.

"Please, sir, my brother has a cough," the boy announced, dragging him back to his tidy cottage in the present.

"A cough from here?" Frollo asked, rising with a gesture that indicated the boy's abdomen. "Or from here?" his fingers went to his own throat.

The boy stared at him dumbly for a minute, then shrugged, biting his lip. "Dunno."

"You are in town?" the greying man asked, reaching for his medicines.

"Oh no, sir. My family is eight or more kilometers from here."

"Lead me," Frollo commanded. "I will come to him." It would be well after dark when they arrived, most likely, and even later when he returned, but he was accustomed to serving others at odd hours.

Any task that would keep the memories – both sweet and bitter – at bay was welcome. He firmly closed to the door to his house and followed the boy.

But walking, too, allowed recollection to sneak up on him, and he could still hear the Bishop's hard words, echoing in his ears like the bells of the cathedral he loved:

"_Archdeacon Claude Frollo. For your crimes against the Church and for profaning the name of our Most Holy Faith, you are hereby de-frocked, excommunicated and exiled. You are not to return to Paris on pain of imprisonment, nor to impersonate a priest on pain of death. May God have mercy on your soul."_

He had not begged or pleaded, wept or placed blame as his life was stripped away ignominiously. When the guards had been dismissed to find the wooden cage on wheels that would serve as his transport out of the city, Louis de Beaumont had approached, shaking his head in genuine bewilderment.

"_When the captain came to me, I thought his suspicions ludicrous. I never would have thought this of you, Claude. Why?"_

_Frollo smiled. It was an old smile, one of pain and an immense, deep understanding of the joy that makes such agony worthwhile. "I love her."_

Now, treading the rutted wagon-road, steps lively to keep up with the boy in front of him, the sinking sun warming him through his light linen garments, the former priest wondered if he would find the serenity of spirit he had put on display for the Bishop here – away from Notre-Dame, away from her.

Their arrival at the boy's home put an end to his musing. His father looked up nervously, simultaneously intimidated and proud to have the knowledgeable doctor in his home, but the mother's expression from where she sat at her sick son's side was pure gratitude. "Doctor! God bless you! He's been coughing for three weeks. Please…?"

The boy went into a spasm as if on cue, and Frollo frowned, concentrating all of his attention on his task. Whatever the origin, the cough had settled in his lungs.

"Here," he started in his slowest, deepest, most calming voice as he moved to the child's bedside, pulling medicine from his bag. "Drink this…"

888

"Look sharpish men, Captain's coming!" the lieutenant called as the great gates to the main guardhouse of the Tuileries creaked open. Phoebus came thundering through on Achilles, the day's patrol streaming behind him with the beaten expressions of war-torn banners, their captain's face dark and foreboding.

His men could testify to the fact that his countenance had not wavered in its severity since the excommunication of the Archdeacon. Always conscious of how the conduct of the King's Archers reflected on him and his post, Phoebus had been a demanding taskmaster before – but in the past month, he had bordered on brutal.

Although none of his men dared voice it in his hearing, they all knew why.

After swearing every member of the guard to silence regarding the events at the top of Notre-Dame's bell tower, it had been a shock to find the streets and drawing rooms, salons and bakeries, alive with salacious gossip in forty-eight hours. The subject? The disappearance of the Archdeacon – and the scandal of the captain's gypsy found in his arms.

Phoebus had known that Frollo's abrupt, secretive dismissal was bound to cause waves of curiosity. He had been Archdeacon for many years, and one had to seek the truly elderly of Paris to find those who could recall the interior of Notre Dame without his stride as boy or man. What Phoebus wondered was how the whole city seemed to have the basic truth more or less hammered out on their wagging tongues.

But what infuriated him was the tone.

The men of the city – of all classes, from the gutter snipes to the dukes – spoke of the whole adventure with a curious mix of admiration and pity. Admiration laced with envy for the nature of the Archdeacon's conquest – a girl half the city had wanted before the tale spread, and now the whole city had fastened their greedy eyes upon. That the staid, solemn and severe priest had managed to capture the complete attention of the spirited dancer was as shocking and titillating as discovering that Claude Frollo – a man who had devoted a lifetime to the Holy Mother – could share that adoration.

Their pity was for his inability to conceal his indiscretion.

And the women of Paris were, if anything, worse than their husbands.

The story, it seemed, had spilled from the stone lips of the cathedral herself. Details cropped up like weeds. This old woman's apple stall fuelled the tale of how they had been found on top of the high tower; that blacksmith's wife swore that Frollo had held Esmeralda to him until chained; the Duchess of Calais and her daughter whispered that his last words to his beloved had been of undying devotion. Overnight, the man who had presided over weddings and funerals, over masses and baptisms, a gaunt, _old_ man presumed as unchanging and unfeeling as the stone statues that watched over his shoulder, had become a romantic figure.

Phoebus could snarl at his inferiors if they were bold enough to inquire, but he had to paste on a game smile for his superiors and equals when they questioned him about the affair. Under their subtle and direct queries, he could feel an undercurrent of contemptuous compassion. He had been cuckolded for a man who had not his money, his position, his looks or his youth.

"_Women, eh?" the Duke of Burgundy remarked, shaking his head. "You stand as one of the most exemplary matches a commoner could make, and she's already in love with another."_

"_She…believes herself to be," Phoebus responded carefully. "But women, especially the young, are so fickle. I have little worry that she will transfer her affection to me."_

"_Still…the Archdeacon got there first. You might want to look elsewhere, young Phoebus. It's a poor day for a fellow when a _priest_ poaches from you."_

Phoebus had locked his jaw and sought an escape. But the trouble was that the assumption of Esmeralda's total infidelity had come as a natural consequence of the tale. Would there be a scandal if sex weren't involved? Of course not. QED, the Archdeacon had slept with the gypsy. The upper classes had long since folded such behaviors into the quiet expectations of their existence, tucking life's indiscretions out of sight neatly like the many-folded pleats of their society gowns. It was the clash of such diametrically opposing and unexpected personalities that had provoked curiosity over this story – emphasized dramatically by the depth of feeling the unlucky pair professed.

Instead of the liberation he had sought with the Archdeacon's removal, the whole affair had left the captain feeling trapped, whether he was in a society drawing room, training his men, patrolling or simply at the tavern. Those below his station sniggered behind his back. His equals and betters were discreetly hinting or bluntly recommending that he seek a different bride.

He _knew_ that the Archdeacon had done no more than hold her – but he, Esmeralda, and the hated Frollo were the only ones who knew and would believe that.

Phoebus set his teeth as he dressed for dinner, knowing he would have to fetch Esmeralda from his stately residence adjacent to the barracks to attend the party. He had grown to dread these evenings passed in her company in the full view of Parisian society. She had stirred from her despondency not to turn to him, as he had once been certain she would, but to engage in a new form of torture. Wherever she went, she was always tailed by women of the upper class, whispering and spreading scandalous stories about the virtues of the Archdeacon, and Phoebus' corresponding vices. They never failed to burst into giggles when he passed by.

He could hardly have a wife that made him a laughingstock. Perhaps it _was_ time to set her aside.

888

"Is it true? They say he loved you – that he would have broken his vows to carry you off and marry you."

Esmeralda raised her eyes to the breathless young woman dressed in striking blue satin, the boldest in a company of three crowding around her seat near the window, gazes alight with unconcealed curiosity.

She had been watching the Seine, the river her one, strange comfort in the weeks since Frollo's exile, rather than engage in the gossip of the party. The gypsy was at a loss as to why Phoebus insisted on bringing her here. Her skills tended to dancing, music, singing – the natural talents that had made her a living – and the practical needs of everyday life. The embroidery of ladies, the fashions coming out of the palaces of Louis XI, were subjects she could find no passion for, and she knew herself to be an embarrassment among this company of wives and daughters of the French nobility and _petit noblesse_.

But those daughters had, after the first fortnight of dinners and formal dances, begun to seek her out, and asked in hushed tones for the truth behind the rumors flooding Paris.

At first, Esmeralda had been as nonplussed by the rampant curiosity of commoner and court as her fiancé. Claude Frollo's banishment – begun that same night she had been torn from his arms, perhaps as she had been sitting in the square outside the church – had ended her world. She found herself powerless to dance, her ears could hear the music, but her feet were no longer able to keep time. Her voice had disappeared, along with her flashing eyes, her flirtatious manner, her will to play with Djali, to eat, to care for life.

Phoebus had insisted that same miserable evening that she be installed in his house, given her own room, and that his servants should care for her until the date of their wedding. She left the Cour des Miracles quietly, without fuss. When she gave Djali to Clopin, she informed him of where she would be, should they need her. Her adopted older brother had watched her go with a sharp sorrow in his heart. He had promised himself as a boy that he would take care of her, and he felt he had failed in some indefinable way.

But Clopin could do nothing for her now. It was questions of this kind, asked in an eager whisper, as if both query and response should be accounted a sin, that had finally roused the dejected gypsy from her terrible lethargy. The women of Paris' high society had offered her a chance for revenge on the man who had forced her hand and destroyed her. Living in his house, Esmeralda had swiftly come to realize that Phoebus de Châteaupers loved himself and his position first and best, and everything else came in a distant second. Including her. When her new companions unwittingly broke the numbing bonds of her remorse, rage had flooded into the safety of the deadened world she had built for herself. Frollo loved her beyond reason, more than the vows he had taken, more than the life he had built. If Phoebus thought that she would submit to his feeble proprietary glances now that his rival was gone, she would ensure he was disappointed.

The tongue could be a vicious weapon. She intended him to understand completely every ounce of pain and humiliation rumor could extract.

She smiled demurely up at the girl who had asked her such a deliberately leading question. Esmeralda guessed the young woman to be perhaps five years her junior, in her late teens and bound to be married by twenty.

"I don't know if the captain would want me to talk about it here," she said delicately, casting her eyes down demurely, as if uncertain. "It is a bit…embarrassing."

That sealed their interest, as she had known it would.

"The women's salon is empty…" the girl in blue suggested quietly, tilting her blond head towards the exit of the main dining room. Esmeralda acquiesced, and they bustled out in a shimmer of summer silks and satins to seat themselves in the tastefully decorated room the mistress of the house used to entertain.

One of the girls – this one in a gown of salmon – turned the key in the lock before hurrying over, her round face alight with the delighted mischief peculiar to much-anticipated gossip.

"So?" The first pressed when the rustling of cloth had settled into total silence. "Is it true? Would he have?"

The smile Esmeralda turned on them now was nothing like the patented look of obedience she had worn moments before. "I don't know if he would have broken his vows," she answered, and her green eyes gleamed with wicked fire. "But he certainly _wanted _to marry me."

888

"You truly dressed as a _boy_ to see him?"

"Every three days," she confirmed a few days later, this time for a flock of five women pretending at needlework while hanging on her every word.

"And he _actually _taught you to read? Not…other…things?" the youngest chirped brazenly.

"Marie!"

"Sorry, Suzanne, but one hears about priests—"

Esmeralda's mouth turned upward in a genuine smile this time as she answered the sixteen-year-old. "Archdeacon Frollo is very devout. He taught me to read. We never exchanged a single word during my lessons that could not have been uttered in the presence of another."

"What about when you _weren't_ in lessons?" Elsie leaned forward.

"When we _weren't_ in lessons…" She grinned coyly, and could feel the subtle shift in their seats as they leaned in breathlessly, "he was different…"

888

"When did you first realize you loved him?"

"The minute I saw him." They were on palfreys for a day out, and her audience this time was no fewer than eighteen ladies of various ages – some pretending indifference, all listening sharply – as they peppered her with questions.

Several of the girls sighed longingly. "Really? But he's so _old_." It was Marie again, wrinkling her small nose as she ruined the mood, and Esmeralda laughed aloud.

"When you have had slobbering boys chasing you for a while, little one, you will respect maturity. But it wasn't the lines of his face – or the color of his hair – that drew me. It was his eyes as he prayed. Such intensity…" She allowed herself to stroke that memory, feeling again the determination to have that look turned on her, and the pain of having attained and then lost it.

The wistfulness of her rapt expression as the gypsy stared into something the rest of them could not see had a profound effect on the women interrogating her. The older dames among them swapped knowing glances – they had seen their own daughters in love, and this strange addition to their world had felt the sting of Cupid's arrow no less. The young women watched Esmeralda intently, each desirous of one day plumbing the depth of such emotion, of having a man who loved them as deeply.

"When did you know he loved you in return?"

"_Did _he love you?" asked the eldest and most removed of the chaperones. Her cool tone made it clear she doubted it.

"Yes," Esmeralda met her challenger's gaze levelly. "He does." Eyebrows rose at her deliberate use of the present tense. "As for when I knew..." she paused, remembering his blushes when he'd fallen into her tent (courtesy of Clopin, she discovered later), the way he'd treated Roxas… "I suspected when I danced for him at the Feast of Fools."

"Ha! Told you so!" Marie whispered triumphantly in Elsie's ear.

"But I _knew _on the day he helped me care for Roxas, a boy who worked with me and broke his ankle." She had been certain since the Festival that he desired her, but it was the look of pure concern in his eyes as his hand closed around her shoulder, an embrace for all that it was in the guise of keeping her kneeling, that had told her he sincerely cared about her.

Suzanne's eyes were lively as she nudged her mare up next to Esmeralda. "What was it like when you slept with him the first time?" she murmured.

"Suzanne!" one of the older women heard and spluttered, shocked.

Esmeralda bowed her head, biting her lip against the assault of the memory of his tortured face as he kissed her hand, cleaving to her and their small intimacies as if they were both delicately precious and the only solid thing in his world.

She swallowed the agony of memory. The price she paid for inflicting these social wounds on her fiancé was the re-opening of her own scars.

"We never did," she answered the innocently-meant query quietly. Suzanne, a child of court where infidelity was as much a part of life as breathing, could never understand how deeply offensive her question would be to the Archdeacon.

Eyes widened. "You _what?_ _Never?_"

"I never gave him so much as a single kiss," Esmeralda confirmed. She smiled faintly. "That was all his doing, I assure you. He was every bit as sincerely devoted as he always appeared."

"Then why was he banished?" Marie asked, puzzled.

Esmeralda's green gaze darkened. "Because Phoebus wished it. And the heart finds ways to betray you, no matter how careful you are."

The conversation had entered dangerous waters, and the dames swiftly entered the stream to re-direct it. As they rode on, Marie sidled her horse between Esmeralda's and Suzanne's to ask her final question.

"If he never kissed you, how do you know he loved you?"

The smile the gypsy turned on her made the sixteen-year-old feel like a child of five. "It was in his face, in his constant battle against himself, in his unceasing effort not to dishonor his vows – or bring me shame. Any other man would have simply given in, regardless of the price to be paid later. Real love is in sacrifice, Marie, not pretty words and panting kisses."

888

"Disgraceful, isn't it?"

Phoebus startled, then turned away from where he was watching his fiancée, hastily rearranging his displeased frown into what would pass for a polite smile. "Demoiselle de Gondelaurier!" He hastened to bend over her hand, brushing the back of her knuckles with his mouth. "A pleasure to see you here."

She smiled discreetly, a pleasant, proper smile for a young woman, but turned her gaze with a faint contraction of her brow towards Esmeralda, who sat surrounded by her company of admirers, employed in their customary occupation of much whispering and giggling. Marie had large golden hoops in her ears, Elsie a silken scarf wrapped round her neck, Suzanne a blouse cut in as close a fashion to Esmeralda's dancing dress as Parisian society and her father would permit.

"You save all of us from potential scandal by exposing the Archdeacon, rescue her from the gutter, and she throws it back in your face," Fleur-de-Lis remarked quietly. "I confess, I don't understand. She cannot truly prefer an old, dried-up priest to a handsome man like you." She met his eye at the last, and blushed prettily. "Forgive me, Captain. I hardly know you…but the madness that has seized those I counted amongst my friends is strange to me. They treat this like a fairy tale from hundreds of years ago – another Tristan and Isolde, or Helen of Troy – instead of seeing it for what it truly is."

Suddenly, she was the most beautiful woman in the room, as well as the wisest and the most thoughtful. The smile Phoebus turned on her next was genuine and disarming. "Demoiselle de Gondelaurier, you are more sensible than any of your friends and twenty times as lovely." He offered her his arm. "And this," the tilt of his head managed to take in the entirety of the women clustered together, "is unfit conversation for a woman of your candor and accomplishment. Please, honor me with the next dance."

As she placed a hand on his arm, Fleur risked a backwards glance at the circle of her peers. Esmeralda's brilliant green eyes met hers candidly, and the Frenchwoman was shocked by the amused disdain she saw light in the gypsy's gaze. As clearly as if she'd spoken the words aloud, Esmeralda's glance said, _Take him. He's yours._

_If that's how you feel about it, I think I will_, Fleur thought haughtily, and let Phoebus lead her away.

888

His courtship of Fleur – for he could not lie to himself, and Phoebus knew that that was precisely what this was – was nothing like his first, laborious chase after Esmeralda.

Fleur came to his arm willing and smiling, was content to sit by her window so that he might ride by on Achilles and wave at her twice a day during his rounds, was pleased to have his attention and quietly attend him in turn in her gentle way.

His nominal fiancée, it seemed, scarce noticed. But Phoebus thought bitterly that she had perceived little since Frollo's departure other than how to become a true spear in his side. She had quite a following among the youngest of the society women, and though their mothers and aunts might disapprove, the girls grew closer to the exotic stranger in their midst every day, and their heads and speech were full of nothing but gypsy tales and the tragedy of Archdeacon Frollo and dancing Esmeralda.

Mid-summer came and went without the wedding he had promised her, and the Captain of the King's Archers began to seriously consider how he might extricate himself from Esmeralda and be joined to the proper, pretty Fleur without angering the latter's father and thereby committing social suicide.

888

The door to her sitting room flew open. Fleur-de-Lis startled, but was only halfway to her feet when she found herself staring down at the blond head of her would-be suitor, her hands clasped in his.

"Marry me." It came out both plea and command.

She sat down again, feeling slightly faint. She had set her sights on this end, but now that it was accomplished, the insurmountable hurdle that had always stood in the way still loomed over them. "Phoebus…how can I? You are engaged to Esmeralda."

"You know she does not hold a candle to you in my affections," he said firmly, lifting his head. "She hasn't since the day we danced. I will find a way to get rid of her…if you would be willing to be my wife."

Fleur smiled in equal parts pleasure and victory. "If you can break your formal attachment to Esmeralda, I would gladly wed you."

888

"I was given to understand that you are to wed the gypsy that has been parading through our drawing rooms and dinner parties on your arm, Captain Phoebus," Dame Aloise de Gondelaurier said firmly, holding his gaze so firmly he nearly fidgeted. "A woman you banished the Archdeacon for. Yet here you stand asking for my daughter's hand. How is this possible?"

Phoebus had crafted his answer carefully, over the course of many days while he delayed seeking permission to marry Fleur-de-Lis. It wasn't until he had arrived at a satisfactory story, complete with physical evidence, that he set his plan in motion.

It wasn't enough to simply cast Esmeralda back into the Cour des Miracles, to allow her to return to her origins. He had offered her a place in society, a glamorous world far beyond the reach of a mere gypsy, and she had gone out of her way to spite and embarrass him. He had hoped that removing Claude Frollo from Paris would solve the problem, but, if anything, it had only exacerbated it, turning his private frustration into public spectacle.

No…she would rue the fact that she refused the love he had showered upon her. Midnight of several nights ago, he had arrived at the perfect conclusion.

"I regret to inform you, Madam, that Esmeralda was arrested this morning for the crime of witchcraft." Dame Aloise recoiled automatically, and Phoebus bowed his head in mock sorrow and shame. "The guard found bones, old scrolls with heathen languages scribbled on them, and symbols drawn in charcoal and blood in her room. She has apparently refused to allow my servants to clean her den for some time, for fear of discovery."

He took a deep breath and looked at the older woman again. "The priests said that she had surely worked some spell to gain my notice – perhaps the same one she used to snare and ruin the Archdeacon – and that God's grace acted through your daughter to help break me of it. I truly love Fleur, Madam de Gondelaurier. I felt like a man waking from death yesterday when I breathed freely for the first time in months. I knew I could not set aside the feelings of my heart, the love that had saved me, for a moment longer, so I hurried to ask you, and to pray that it is not too late."

Dame Aloise studied the earnest countenance of the young man before her. There was no denying the callousness with which his fiancée treated him. It had been plain to all, from the first soiree in which she had appeared, that she cared nothing for the captain. Most of the older women had noted and clucked their tongues, chalking her indifference up to the infatuation the child carried with her for the exiled Frollo.

But witchcraft…they had found evidence, or so he said, and there did, indeed, seem to be something brighter, more alive, about the captain today than she had ever seen him.

And she knew her daughter to be head-over-heels for him. He was all she talked about.

A slow nod of her head. "If, indeed, the gypsy is found guilty of witchcraft, you have my blessing to marry Fleur."

Phoebus smiled, seized her hand and kissed it several times. "Thank you, Madame."

Her mouth curved minutely in an expression of approval at this ardent display. "You are most welcome, Captain Phoebus."

888

"They've arrested Esmeralda!" Axel panted, doubling over in front of Clopin.

"What?" The long-legged tumbler shot to his feet, wrapping both hands around the young boy's shoulders.

"They accused her of witchcraft and took her away in a cart," he gabbled, eyes wide with fright.

"Witchcraft…" Rosa paled as she turned to Clopin. "You know what they do to witches."

"I do indeed," he said tersely, his usually mobile mouth taut and immovable. He held so perfectly still for a moment that one expected to hear wheels of thought turning in his brain, then he shook Axel slightly.

"I have another job for you tonight. I'll pay you double, but you have to run as fast as you can."

Axel nodded, trying to calm his heaving chest. "Find the bell ringer – the hunchback, Quasimodo." The boy's eyes widened in fright, and Clopin squeezed his shoulders hard. "Do not be so foolish as to judge a man by his appearance. He is friend to us and foster-son of Archdeacon Frollo. If anyone knows where they sent him, he will. Find him. Tell him to find the Archdeacon. And to summon him to Paris with all speed."

Axel nodded, shoved away his fear of the unusual bell ringer, and sprinted off again, disappearing out of sight up a staircase that would lead him above ground.

"The Archdeacon?" Rosa asked, curious.

"_I could sooner stop my heart beating. Clopin…I love him."_ "Esmeralda has been racing for destruction since his departure. She does not care to live if he is not here. We can save her from the fire – and we will if we must. But he is the only one who can give her life."

888

When they had come for her in the morning, Esmeralda was not quite surprised. Phoebus had been entirely too pleased with himself recently, and she had been certain that the inestimable Fleur-de-Lis had made a claim on his heart. He had to be plotting some way of ridding himself of her. Where _had _Fleur been when Frollo was still in Paris, when her constant, ego-soothing courtesy would have saved them all this disaster?

But when the charge leveled at her by evening was sorcery, with ample "evidence" provided from her rooms in Phoebus' house, her stomach twisted and her mouth ran suddenly dry.

The penalty for witchcraft was death by burning. Phoebus was, indeed, hell-bent on retribution for the difficulty she had caused him.

She folded her legs and sat on the cold stone floor of her cell. Gone were the dresses the captain had insisted she wear, and she did not miss either the satin pleats that got in her way or the heavy jewels that were designed to anchor women to the earth. But, covered in the white shift of the damned, she missed her own clothing.

Closing her eyes, she leaned back against the wall. Phoebus would insure that her sentence was severe, just as he had seen to it that Frollo was banished.

She was not so afraid to die, less afraid of burning than of living with Phoebus in a loveless, lifeless marriage until death claimed her at the end of that long, empty road. She had to wonder, in moments of honest self-reflection, if she had not been deliberately goading him into such drastic action – anything to earn her release from the waking nightmare of serving as his fiancée and act of charity.

But sitting in her cell, whittling down the hours to the end of her life, her yearning to see Claude one more time – if only to offer him an apology – grew, eclipsing all other thoughts.

Bitter loneliness filled her as her mind touched the angled planes of his well-memorized, cherished face, and she bowed her head to her folded knees, and wept.

888

The pounding at his cottage, from a fist that sounded as if it were nearly a battering ram, was so familiar that Frollo was out of bed and throwing open the oak door to see his foster-son before he registered how strange it was that Quasimodo should be _here_, five days hard ride from Paris, at an hour when the moon had already risen and sunk from the sky.

"Quasimodo?" Frollo stepped aside, allowing the hunchback in.

"Father!" A grin lit up the hideous face, making it perhaps more deformed than usual, but in an undeniably friendlier manner.

"It is good to see you, my son. But why have you come? What has brought you here?" the former priest asked, reaching for the half-drunk bottle of wine on the shelf. His movement was arrested by thick fingers wrapping round his wrist.

The delighted expression of greeting had vanished as quickly as it had come. "I am glad to see you, too, Father, but there is no time for explanations now. Dress. We have to go back to Paris."

"I am forbidden to enter the city," Frollo reminded Quasimodo gently.

"That doesn't matter," the bell ringer returned bluntly. "You are needed." An arched eyebrow invited Quasimodo to continue.

"Esmeralda has been accused of witchcraft. When I left, public opinion was that she was guilty – and would be burned."

Frollo had not heard a single word past _witchcraft_. His first reaction had been to freeze in horror. Those beautiful eyes, that toss of raven hair, that furious intelligence, immolated by fire? The woman he would have died for, that the priest in him _had _died for, a victim of flame?

Then he was moving, so quickly he scarcely noticed what he grabbed and discarded. He was shedding his sleeping attire, donning the rough tunic and trousers that had become his habitual wear in the countryside. "How long?" he asked tersely, tying the straps on his leather jerkin and thrusting his feet into his boots.

"I left Paris three sunrises ago." Frollo stared at him, fingers stilled in momentary astonishment. "I've had two horses die under me and I haven't slept in seventy-two hours." He shrugged his hump, shoving aside the limitations of his wretched body. "I can sleep later."

"Indeed," the makeshift doctor acknowledged swiftly, his mind already elsewhere. Three days. Anything could have happened in three days. Esmeralda might have already fed the insatiable bloodlust of the people of Paris.

"You have horses?" he asked sharply.

"I do," Quasimodo confirmed. "Clopin supplied the money. His only concern was that you be brought back."

Frollo seized a bag of basic supplies and slung it over his shoulder. _Clopin_. The unknown actor that had, nevertheless, given him Esmeralda in a thousand small ways. "I owe him my thanks. Come. You were right – there is no time to waste."

The following day, the tiny village would wake to find their doctor vanished. If anyone had been awake to peep at windows on that midnight, they would have quickly turned baffled gossip into incendiary rumor, featuring a hunched demon and two horses made of wind that disappeared down the dirt road as if the devil himself were on their tail.

888

"You stand accused," the judge boomed from his seat at the apex of a half-circle calculated to intimidate – justices, priests and magistrates glaring down on the cleared center of the hall, where their victim waited, "of the crime of witchcraft, of meeting with the devil, of leading the witches' Sabbath and associating with a demon familiar." At this, glances were cast to Djali, chained next to his mistress in that court. "Furthermore," the judge continued coldly, "you have been charged of using your spells to entrap and ruin Archdeacon Claude Frollo, and attempting the same on the Captain of the King's Archers, Phoebus de Châteaupers. Do you confess to these crimes?"

At the last, the woman in the middle of the hall, who had been sitting so still she might have been sculpted from the same stone that formed the façade of the Palace they were in, lifted her head and said plainly, "I do not."

The magistrate frowned, the priests shook their heads and the judges sighed. "Surely you must see that all the evidence is against you," the judge said, and his tone became moderate, almost indulgent. "Confess, and your punishment will be far more forgiving."

"The only evidence against me," she riposted, and it seemed that spirit re-animated her as she defied the court, color returning to a face that had been pale, fire imbuing the shuttered eyes, "are a few painted sticks and chalked lines, all placed oh-so-carefully by my dear fiancé to hide the fact that he is not man enough to admit that one cannot twist a heart the same way you twist an arm!"

Cheers erupted from where the general mob of Paris had pressed in behind her. Innocent or guilty, they were there for entertainment, and loved a feisty prisoner.

The judge's lips thinned to almost nothing as he slammed his hand on the table. "Silence!" He glowered down at the gypsy who refused to cower in front of him. "In addition to everything else, shall I also hold you in contempt of court?"

"My lord," she answered evenly, and from his perch in the balcony, Clopin could see grim enjoyment on her features, "I may as well burn for attempting to kill the king himself! I can only die once."

This brought another shout of laughter from the crowd. "Well said!" cried several voices.

The priests and magistrates seemed at a loss. The primary judge was going purple in his rage at being mocked. "Very well. Have it your way, witch. It seems a different method of…persuasion…will be required."

"You may…persuade…" she mimicked his threat, dragging the sound out, "me all you wish. In any way you wish. The answer is the same. I am not a witch. Djali – being rather cleverer than most goats and certainly smarter than the old rams before me—" a collective, appreciate gasp swept the mob for this insult, "—is no more than a trained animal. But you will do what you will do, regardless of truth – or of justice."

Absolute quiet descended following her ringing pronouncement, the tenor of the proceedings no longer a show, but an act of rebellion. Beauty married to boldness was a potent combination, and many, both behind her and leaning over the balconies, found that they were firmly convinced of her innocence. The city had been buzzing with stories about the Archdeacon – but witchcraft had never been part of it, until rumor started to trickle down from the houses of the wealthy. Now it rebounded back outwards, and took the form of a question mark.

The change of mood did not escape the men of power circled around her. The judge swiftly rose. "These proceedings are completed for the day! Guards – take the witch back down to her cell. We shall see if her tongue can be loosened tomorrow."

888

"She has confessed to nothing."

Esmeralda heard the voice of her guard and the fall of his heavy boots against the stone long before she could see him.

"Whether she confesses or not, we will see justice done." The reviled tones of her one-time fiancé reached her, and the dancer crossed her legs in her shackles, assuming an air of boredom. Knowing Phoebus, he doubtless desired a pitiable display, a flood of tears, a bout of supplication from her knees.

She would not give him the satisfaction. Her fight in the courtroom had revived her, and she would throw herself out the window before submitting to anything he wanted.

He strode into view, broad shoulders home to a sweeping cape, blond hair managing to gleam in the light of the torches, the very image of a charming prince from a fairy tale. Esmeralda watched him, unmoved. His outer skin belied the true nature underneath – that of a viper, evil-tempered and swift to strike.

"Leave us," he ordered the guard. A sharp salute, a click of his heels, and her warden was marching away. He studied her absolute indifference for a moment before growling:

"I would have given you anything, Esmeralda. Anything you wanted. Everything you asked for. I gave you a place in the court of the King. And this – this!" a wave of his arm took in the cell, the Palace above them, the dripping water running under her feet, "is what you have chosen, instead. This, and the gallows – or the pyre!"

He was obviously waiting for a reply, gaze fastened on her averted face. "You made a critical error in banishing the Archdeacon," she told him quietly. "You misjudged me. You have always failed to understand how much I love him. What do I care if I am hanged or burned? I told you months ago, Phoebus, that my heart belonged to another. Your pride did not allow you to listen. Claude paid his price, now I will pay mine." Silence followed her tired pronouncement, and then she stirred, and she stared directly into his for the first time in months as she concluded sincerely:

"You have my gratitude, Phoebus, for granting me the death sentence and sending him into exile."

The she turned her head away, sliding back into the apathy she adopted just for him. "Now get out. Marry your Fleur-de-Lis, and raise beautiful sons as vapid and cowardly as yourself."

Phoebus clenched his jaw so tightly, the veins on his neck popped out in his fury. "The jury convicted today," he ground out, and she knew that this piece of acidic, triumphant news had been the true purpose of his visit tonight. "Tomorrow you will be taken to the Place de Grevé – and consigned to Hell."

These tidings did not even elicit a shrug. The fire of the court had been submerged by the sea of her indifference to him. She sat completely still until he retreated, the familiar feeling of frustration bubbling in his blood.

888

"They're here!" Axel's sharp voice rang through the court, and Clopin rose like a puppet whose master has pulled its strings.

Quasimodo's awkward form and gait were instantly distinguishable as the gypsies parted to allow the newcomers' passage. It was the man behind him that struck Clopin as much-changed. Instead of the voluminous blacks of the priesthood, this character looked like a lean, country man – a farmer or doctor from an outlying district.

He was greyer than the Archdeacon had ever appeared, and more worn, as if the city's refinement had been rubbed raw and chipped away. Clopin recognized the weight of sorrow in his hollowed cheeks, the sting of fear in the too-sharp cast to his blue eyes.

"You are the Archdeacon?" the tumbler asked, striding forward.

"I am Claude Frollo," the man corrected, unsmiling, as their palms met. "You are Clopin, I presume."

"I am."

"She is safe?"

"As safe as one can be, in the dungeons of the Palace of Justice," the gypsy replied somberly.

The relief on Frollo's face was palpable. His whole body seemed to exhale a breath he'd held for three days. "She is alive."

"Until tomorrow at sundown. Her trial concluded today. She burns tomorrow at the Place de Grevé."

"You have a plan?"

"We were forming one."

"Show me."

888

Quasimodo swung from a spire and landed lightly on the roof of the Palace of Justice. His hump, outlined for a moment against a brilliant array of stars, was even larger than usual – until it moved.

The Archdeacon gingerly slid off his foster-son's shoulders.

"Are you alright, Father?"

Frollo winced slightly. Riding on Quasimodo's back as if the boy were a beast of burden sat ill with him on principle. Doing so while scaling the many stories of the forbidding edifice had been a terror.

"It is only nervousness, my son. You did well – I never knew you could climb like that."

When the hunchback had suggested an hour ago that they enter the Palace of Justice via the roof to avoid alarming the guards, who were all stationed around doors and balconies on the lower levels, the gypsies had stared at him as if he were mad.

"_Even if we took ladders…how would we get them there without being spotted?"_

"_It can't be done."_

"_We won't use ladders. I've spent my life climbing Notre-Dame," Quasimodo ended the argument firmly, and waved his large hand contemptuously at their rough drawing of the Palace of Justice. "I can scale this matchstick."_

Slinging the other burden Quasimodo had carried in the night from his broad shoulders, Frollo hastened to secure the rope around a thick stone protrusion – its purpose obscured by darkness – and sent the heavy hemp sailing down the side of the building into the street. They dimly heard its coils slap the cobblestone, and then he saw the faint vibration that meant Clopin had seized hold of it.

The roof's oaken door had a simple lock of iron. When the gypsy pulled himself, panting, over the gutter, he rolled to his feet and immediately withdrew a set of tools from some pocket secreted in his coat and set to work on the door. The one-time priest reflected coldly that once he would have taken confession and assigned penance for the court for theft, now he was aiding it, and feeling no remorse nor fear for his soul as he did so.

It was the work of a moment for Clopin, and the latch clicked silently. The Archdeacon and the tumbler met each other's eyes in the starlight. "Find her," Clopin bade the taciturn man, clasping his arm. "We'll deal with the guards."

"My thanks," Frollo murmured, returning the grip. Quasimodo ducked through the door, and Frollo followed swiftly, their feet light on the stone.

The upper levels of the palace were empty, and they moved through patches of shadow inscribed by the moonlight streaming through the windows that adorned the top stories of the building. Candles and torches had been foregone tonight in favor of using darkness as their ally, and both rescuers were grateful for the brightness of the moon.

They passed the ground level and began their descent to the subterranean dungeons. The Palace of Justice had as many floors below ground as above. It was here that they slowed their steps and quieted their breathing. The chambers that saw the light kept the sun's hours. But in this prelude to Hell, where perpetual night was the norm, torture took place around the clock.

The clink of metal and a low humming betrayed the approach of a denizen of this pit. Quasimodo gestured for Frollo to stay back. The gypsies had determined that their assault on the building to save one of their own was only to be expected, the presence of the bell ringer could be convincingly explained, but Frollo's part in the plan had to be kept a secret.

The man strode past, and a fist shot out of the stair, connecting with his temple. Frollo set his jaw and made himself watch, instead of turning away as he longed to. He abhorred asking his foster-son to indulge in violence, even to rescue Esmeralda, but they had agreed it was a price that had to be paid.

The man crumpled, Quasimodo snatching the weapon out of the air before it, too, could fall and add to the commotion. As it was, the sound of flesh striking the floor was curiously muffled. The hunchback lifted the burly man easily, and sat him in the staircase, just beyond the flickering light of the torches. Frollo laid two fingers against the man's neck, found a pulse and released a sigh. He would have a wicked headache upon awakening, but that would be all.

They continued their journey, passing room after room of nothing, instruments hanging unused in the gaping black of the cells.

The pair wound their way down a further three sets of stairs, the air growing colder and staler with every step downwards. There was a full-out fire blazing on this level, in a room just beyond the staircase, and Frollo could see shadows belonging to at least three men cast on the stone.

"…keep her myself," one was saying roughly. "She's a prize piece, if you ask me."

"Nobody did ask you, loudmouth, so shut up," replied another lazily. "Fill my cup, I'm dry. She's for the fire."

"Yeah…but…who would care – who would check? – if she's a bit roughened before she gets there? We know she's a whore, the Archdeacon already had her—"

Frollo flew into motion, fury burning in his veins, the need to silence this man brutally, to slam his fist into that awful mouth, his murderous rage so total, so _new _and consuming a feeling that he couldn't have controlled it if he tried—

Quasimodo's hand on his bicep jerked him to a stand-still. He whirled on the hunchback, wrath burning in his blue eyes, only to see the large, good eye swimming with compassion.

"You cannot be seen, Father," he whispered softly. "I will do it."

The older man struggled to master the sudden frenzy, the absolute anger that made it possible to kill. He knew it was the dark compliment to the passion of his love for Esmeralda, the balance of blackness to the light of his adoration, a door to that part of himself that he had consigned to non-existence in his life as a priest.

Quasimodo had moved. Now he was in the doorway, Frollo heard the shocked gasps of the guards:

"What the devil—"

"It's the hunchback!"

"What's he doing—?"

The sound of Quasimodo's knuckles slamming into a skull. "By God, he's killed the lieutenant! Get him!"

"That's the devil himself! _You_ get him!"

"Draw your sword, you coward!"

While they argued, Quasimodo advanced into the room, and all Frollo could see now was his shadow, its deformed shape merging with the others. Steel rang as swords left their sheaths, and the doctor started forward. Secret or not, he couldn't leave his fosterling on his own.

He saw the hunched shade lift another in its arms, and throw the first at the second. In the small guard room, there was no space to maneuver. There was a flash of flesh and metal as the airborne man passed the doorway and the guards collided, weapons clattered to the floor, groans were heard on both sides, and then Quasimodo stood over them.

"I am sorry, gentlemen," he said in his quiet voice, "but you have someone we need." A hand rose, fell, and the groaning ceased. It was followed by the incongruously delicate tinkling noise of keys being extracted from a belt.

The ugly head peered through the door. "It's safe now."

"_Did_ you kill the lieutenant?" Frollo asked, striding forward.

Quasimodo shot him a hurt look. "Of course not, Father. He was just the closest, so I knocked him out first."

Taking the bell ringer at his word, Frollo passed over these men without another glance. The careless words of the guard, _"Who would care…if she's a bit roughened…the Archdeacon already had her…"_ had erased his sympathy. Was that what Paris thought of them? And that gave them license to treat her with such depravity?

They hurried down the hallway, and now it was Frollo who took the lead, keys clutched in his white hand as Quasimodo fell back, sensing the all-consuming importance of this part of their search to the severe man who had raised him.

For his part, Frollo passed every open door with a blind eye. She was here. The guards' bawdy references had laid to rest the irrational fear that she might have been moved, that they might kill her tonight, ahead of schedule and forever removing her from his world.

Finally, they came to a locked door. He hastily moved through three keys. On the last one, it clicked open.

The bowed black head, faced obscured by tangles of raven hair he'd touched so many times in his dreams, did not look up.

"I will not confess," she said tonelessly, "no matter what you try."

"I have not come for your confession tonight, my child," he answered quietly.

Her eyes snapped up, the green blazing with incredulous denial, and a glimmer of hope.

"Claude?" Her gaze fixed on his face, and she rose clumsily in her hurry, the shackles on her ankles and chains around her wrists binding her to the floor.

"Esmeralda." He found a smaller iron key on the chain and crossed the foul, dingy cell. She held up her hands, eyes imploring as he found the keyhole and twisted. Her handcuffs snapped open, fell to the floor, and he was holding an armful of beautiful, grateful gypsy who had buried her face in his cloak. Frollo permitted himself to press his mouth to the top of her grimy hair. Even after days in the pits of the Palace of Justice, he was certain he'd never felt anything so soft.

"How—?" she breathed when she raised her head again, and he could see fresh tear tracks streaking her face. He laid a finger across the groove of her lips.

"Later. When we are safe."

She nodded her assent and stood back immediately, allowing him to kneel at her feet and free her legs.

Quasimodo had waited at a respectful distance outside the cell. When Esmeralda saw him, she covered her hand with her mouth to contain her joyous shout of laughter, and contented herself with running to him and sweeping him into an embrace. Frollo could make out the words "Thank you!" whispered furiously as Quasimodo blushed and patted her awkwardly.

Their journey back into the upper levels of the Palace was uneventful. Frollo had swung his cloak around Esmeralda's shoulders – the white dress of the condemned gleamed like a large and ghostly pearl in the moonlight.

A shadow detached itself from a pillar near the main entrance. Quasimodo, travelling in front, stopped instantly and thrust a hand behind him, furiously gesturing for his charges to halt.

"Esme?"

"Clopin!"

Realizing who the dark shape was as the gypsy raced forward to hug her adopted brother, Quasimodo stood back. "Shhh!" he cautioned them.

More gypsies waited next to the statues flanking the great door. Hands were rung and quiet exclamations made as they started for the much smaller and unobtrusive clerks' entrance, now well-oiled and unlocked for their escape.

888

Entering Notre-Dame under cover of deep night was both novel and intimately familiar. Frollo let his hands blindly trail on the stones that had surrounded him nearly his whole life, the patterns etched on them by both masons and time well-known to his fingertips.

Yet he was plagued by the strange double sensation of never having left the cathedral, balanced against the impatient knowledge that the great church belonged to his past. He was no longer Archdeacon, he was a doctor; no more a Parisian, now he hailed from the provinces. The massive monument he had loved since his youth was a resting place, a sanctuary, the final launching place for his future. It was not his home.

The ascent to the belfry had been a common path for all three, and they slowly padded their way through the nave, guided by the moonlight casting the rose window's dimmed and watery reflection on the floor. When they were through the heavy door that Quasimodo now carried a key to and locked behind them, identical sighs rose from the trio, and the need for absolute silence was lifted.

"I have extra mattresses," Quasimodo whispered, striking a match on one of the stone gargoyles and lighting three candles, passing Esmeralda and Frollo one each.

"You can sleep here, Esmeralda," the hunchback indicated a kind of alcove to the right side of the ladder they had just climbed, a low space crisscrossed by the wooden beams that formed the scaffolding leading to the iron bells. He pushed a mattress and a pile of blankets into the space, stopping to hang one over what could qualify as an entrance, offering her a chance at modesty.

"And you can sleep here, Father." The ungainly man was hauling a thick pallet stuffed with hay beneath the cross-section of wooden beams at the apex of the second, shorter ladder that took him to the bell-pulls for the triplets.

"My thanks, Quasimodo. For everything. We could not have saved her tonight without you," Frollo said, a hand on his shoulder. The hunchback smiled at his parent, cast a shy glance at the gypsy, and shuffled off towards his own room at the back of the tower.

Esmeralda set about straightening her borrowed bed things, intensively aware of Frollo doing the same, not ten meters away. She slowly smoothed out wrinkles and lumps, suddenly reluctant to turn around. She was abruptly very aware of the filth from the Palace that coated her skin, the smell of sweat and blood that came from mild torture.

He'd come for her – but did that imply had he forgiven her for his excommunication? His exile? For ruining his life? The instant she'd first seen him, every inch the calm rescuer, framed by the door of her cell, none of her guilt had managed to catch up to her joy, but their flight through Paris and into the cathedral had provided sufficient time for uncertainty to blossom.

For his part, Frollo moved with equal trepidation. He knew what he wanted from this woman, had wanted ever since the day he'd knelt with her over an injured boy in the street, and was now free to have. He had been relieved of his vows, she released from her pledge of marriage.

He felt the presence of the dark above them, the flame of their candles like two small eyes for their only witnesses – the bells. The priest in him balked at the raw temptation offered by circumstance, struggling to bank the desire that had ignited anew and with added force the minute he'd opened her cell. While he was no longer a priest for Rome, the tenants he had striven to live by his whole life still applied. He forced his trembling hands to stillness on the soft mattress cover. He was no green novice, to snatch what he wanted and care little about the consequences. Inexperienced he might be in the art of loving women, but this was Esmeralda, and he would not treat her roughly, whatever the clamoring in his blood.

Each made a decision, and turned at precisely the same time to meet the gaze of the other. For a moment, they held their distance, flame casting light and shadows over the dark planes and worried green eyes of her face, on the pale skin and tender blue eyes of his.

For the rest of their lives, neither would ever know who moved first.

He met her in the middle of the floor, arms encircling her to draw her close, savoring the heady feeling of his heartbeat suddenly galloping in his chest. Her hands came up to loop around his neck and pull his head down, intention all-too-plain. Once he touched her, Frollo feared he wouldn't be able to stop himself, so he rested his forehead against hers before he could taste her mouth, determined to speak first.

Esmeralda looked into the blue eyes so close to hers, reveled in the breathing as ragged as her own, the lean legs pressed against hers, the grip of the long hands on her back. His touch vanished her doubts. She was certain. He still loved her.

"Come with me," he whispered. "When we leave tomorrow…stay at my side." He knelt slowly, palms dragging down her cotton-clad thighs as if reluctant to release her before gently taking her hands and bringing the tip of each finger to his lips. "I have brought you nothing more for bridal beauty than a spare cloak for your escape, and I cannot offer you a handsome husband with a place in the court of kings. I am old – a priest and a doctor – and have little to give you other than my heart. But you have taught me that loving you and loving God are two facets of the same jewel – both sacred, each made to magnify the splendor of the other. If you will consent to be my wife, my life is yours until I breathe my last."

She fell to her knees in front of him, taking his face in her hands. "I consent." This time he did not stop her as she reached to finish what they had started with a glance between street and balcony more than a year ago.

Her lips were full under his, warm and inviting. He gasped a little at the first contact, and then her hands were sliding from his face to tangle in his hair, his hands were gliding along her body, and he lost himself in the smell, taste and feel of Esmeralda.

His thin mouth was gentle, uncertain, hesitant. Esmeralda had never exchanged more than a few kisses in her early teens, fumbling explorations that had been more friendly than passionate, but she knew herself to be more experienced than the man who had dedicated a lifetime to Notre-Dame. She kissed him ardently, encouraging him to be bolder. He complied with pleasant, if surprising speed, his tongue caressing her lips, leaving her gasping. His mouth left hers to trail a series of kisses down her jaw and neck, each print a brand. She moaned aloud when he found the sensitive spot where her neck joined her shoulder, his tongue flickering forth lightly to stake its claim.

Her unrestrained whimpers acted as stimulants. He needed her closer to him, _inside _him, the fusing of two into one. He sat, dragging her gracelessly into his lap. She straddled him eagerly as he carded his fingers through her hair, setting her scalp aflame. Mouth still locked with his, her hands found and tugged at the strings of his leather jerkin. As soon as he shrugged that off, she found the knots of his simple linen shirt and frantically loosened those, freeing a triangle of his chest to her questing touch.

The white shift of her prison garb had ridden up as they greedily stroked and consumed one another, and the warmth of her bare skin under his hands as his fingers traced patterns up her smooth thighs shocked Frollo back to himself.

"Esmeralda…" it was a groan of pleasure more than a word as her fingers slid under his shirt, dragging up his spine. Her eyes were closed as he withdrew from the kiss, her dark face flushed red with desire. "Esmeralda…we have to stop. Please."

"Why?" she queried breathlessly, eyes snapping open.

"We're getting carried away."

"I thought we were _allowed _to get carried away now?" she challenged, leaning into him again. He placed a hand on her shoulder – he dared not touch her chest – to keep his discipline firm.

"When we are married, my love, I shall get as carried away as you could wish. Until then…there are proprieties to be observed." Seeing she was about to object, he shook his head. "I had no intent to dishonor you, my post or myself before. The only thing that has changed since then is that I no longer have to worry about being the Archdeacon. I cherish you greatly – and I never want you to doubt that. We will do this properly."

She studied his face, and her features cooled from impatience to understanding and agreement. She slowly shifted herself off his lap, the cotton dress covering her completely once again as they took gulping breaths to tame the adrenaline that had rushed into their veins with their indulgence in sensuality.

"Good night, Claude," she finally said, returning to her make-shift room behind a sheet.

"Sleep well," he bade her inanely, knowing that it was unlikely for either of them. A quirk of her swollen lips told him that she knew it before she blew out her candle and let the sheet fall, removing her from his sight.

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In the grey, pre-dawn light of Paris, the night guards sleepily rubbed their eyes, waited lethargically for their day-time replacements, and blearily waved the already steady stream of traffic out of the city without notice.

Two horses and three riders, draped in black, hoods up against the early-morning chill, departed the city in the river of farmers' and merchants' wagons with as little challenge as the rest, their pace deliberately as moderate as the caravan surrounding them.

When they had cleared Paris by several kilometers and the horses had halted to pull up the lush summer grass on a small hill, Esmeralda twisted from where she sat behind Frollo to look back on the city. Quasimodo, on his horse beside them, was also considering the vista with a look of amazement and love. The rising sun's beams broke over the city gently, this light soft and yellow with the promise of morning as it struck the white face of Notre-Dame, the cathedral silent in the morning for the first time in decades.

It would not be long before they were missed – both bell ringer and gypsy – but it would not matter. By the time anyone realized that they had actually left Paris, they would be at their destination.

Esmeralda would miss the crowds of the place she had called home since she was six years of age, the bustle of people, the Cour des Miracles where Clopin, Rosa and the rest would lead Phoebus a merry chase when he came to them, searching for her.

Frollo's hand caressed hers where it wrapped around his chest, and she glanced up to see his eyes fixed on her with a tender, compassionate expression. His first, involuntary, exile, had granted him time to come to terms with his life outside Paris, and he understood the tangle of emotion welling within her. "Are you ready, beloved?"

She did not turn to look at the capitol again as she smiled up at him. "I am."

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A/N: Please let me know what you think!


	4. Part IV: Epilogue

Disclaimer: The world of the hunchback belongs primarily to Victor Hugo and his novel, published in 1831. Other rights go to Disney, who created some of the scenes I used in this piece.

Author's Note: The final chapter, which is really just an epilogue. This part is pure fluff – the hearts-and-flowers, happily-ever-after cheesy epilogue that I have never written. I wasn't sure if I would include it here, but it was part of the video, and it ended up being fun to construct beyond the world that Disney and Hugo can offer. I hope you have enjoyed my little tale. Happy reading!

Epilogue

_1483_, _One Year Later_

The midwife ducked under the low mantle of the door to their bedroom. Frollo, pacing nervously outside, started forward. "Not yet, Doctor," she chided him, holding up a hand. "We need more hot water."

He grabbed the bucket from the window and hurried to the town well, earnestly entreating God to ensure Esmeralda's safety. He had only ever seen healthy babies – usually with their joyous mothers – at christenings. Even Quasimodo had arrived at the church already somewhere between six and nine months old – ugly, but sturdy. Had he known what actually giving birth would entail, he never would have risked her life on it.

In his hurry back to the cottage, he held the bucket very level, preparing to pour it into the cauldron over the fire outside—

As he approached his small house, he heard fresh cries. He dropped the bucket, water flooding the earth and swiftly cutting a tiny stream back down towards the well as he tore into the bedroom. _Merciful Father, let her be all right…_

"Doctor!"

"Claude!" She was smiling radiantly, the smile that always made his heart pound in anticipation, ignoring the midwife's scolding as the young assistant expertly swathed a bundle.

"You are well," he sighed in visible relief, taking the midwife's stool at his wife's bed without a second thought and seizing the hand that lay on the coverlet.

"I am. Tired – but – Claude…look!" The young woman was leaning over Esmeralda, and she reached eagerly for the cloth.

Swaddled inside the cloth was a tiny person, hair black as pitch, squinting eyes blue like the morning sky.

"Your son," she said, and her grin broadened as she took in the enchanted look on her husband's face.

"So small," he breathed, hesitantly sticking a finger over the red cheek to stroke his son's skin. "So soft."

"Congratulations, Doctor. Madame Frollo," the midwife said, giving up on her attempts to push Frollo away from the bed.

"Thank you. What should we name him?" Esmeralda asked.

"Shall we name him for your father?" Frollo returned thoughtfully.

"I never knew my father," she admitted, her mouth twisting wryly. He blinked at her in faint astonishment. She _hadn't_? They had been married for a year, and still he felt as if sometimes he knew nothing about her.

"I have a brother, Jehan. He will probably never meet our son…" he suggested slowly. As far as he knew, Jehan was pursuing his course of study at the university. His younger brother had made it clear years ago that he had no interest in the priesthood, and Frollo had encouraged him in his own path. He had not spoken to his brother since long before his exile – since before he met Esmeralda.

"Jehan," she rolled the word around in her mouth, and nodded. "Jehan."

As if in response to his name, little Jehan opened his mouth and began to wail. Frollo snatched his fingers away from the petal-soft cheek. "I have hurt him. He doesn't like me," the new father said nervously.

"Claude," she stilled his frantic worries with a look, "he's hungry." And she freed a breast to feed him, his suckling mouth eagerly burrowing into her as Frollo hovered over them both.

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_1487, Five Years Later_

"Can't catch me!"

The low stool bowled over as Jehan launched himself through the house, upsetting the chickens that had clustered around the hearth in their ever-questing search for food. They scattered in a whirlwind of "bk-awks!" and feathers, settling just in time for pudgy Clopin, age two, to toddle through them and send them careening again.

"Jehan Frollo!" His mother's sharp voice reached his ears, and the four-year-old screeched to a halt as his father appeared in the door, tall, gaunt frame blocking his son's exit.

"You let the chickens in again by leaving the door open," Esmeralda reprimanded. "Now who's going to get them back—"

"Got'cha!" Stalled by his father's legs, Jehan was stationary long enough for his brother to seize him round the middle.

"—out?" Esmeralda finished dryly.

"Clopin came in last," Jehan announced, shoving his younger sibling off him. "It's his fault."

"Who's the elder?" Frollo asked in his deep voice. "Who is more responsible?"

"Papaaaaaaa!" Jehan wailed.

"Come! I will help you take out the chickens, and then we can go fishing."

Esmeralda could not help the smile that blossomed on her face as their son accepted this proposal with enthusiasm, chasing after the chickens to hurry them out the door, never noticing that his father's 'help' consisted of stepping aside to allow the fowl out.

"Fishing?" she asked. Theirs was an ocean-side village – not the first place of his exile, but a town of their own choosing – and ocean fishing was its primary industry. "Claude…that's a bit risky."

"Not in the ocean, my love. I'll take him to the river," he told her, wrapping a long arm around her waist and pressing a kiss to her forehead. "I don't dare try the ocean. The best fishermen here are half-fish themselves."

The former priest had learned a number of tricks and trades after their exile, fishing amongst them, to blend them in. Esmeralda's skills of cooking, spinning and stitching had proven a great deal more useful here than Frollo's ability to read and script French and Latin, or the in-depth knowledge of the sciences he had gained in his studies as a young man.

"Be careful. He doesn't swim yet," she cautioned.

"Always. Jehan! Are the chickens gone?"

"Yes, Papa!" the four-year-old reappeared, the blue eyes he had inherited from his sire sparkling in the tanned face that got darker with every passing year, evidence of his mother's ethnicity.

"Then we will be home with supper at the end of the afternoon." He made to kiss her forehead again but allowed her to catch his head and bring it down farther for a proper kiss. A lifetime of repression had permanently branded shyness on his soul, and he seldom kissed her with passion outside their bedroom. Sometimes, he had to admit it was more satisfying to let her win.

"Ewwww," Jehan pronounced his opinion, nose screwed up in the time-honored disgust children bestow on their parents. "Can we go?"

"Go on, you rascal," his mother said, her mouth curving delightedly. "Back by sundown!" she called.

"Yes, Maman!"

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_1492, Ten Years Later_

"Quasimodo!"

The hunchback made his way sideways into the house, the breadth of his hunched shoulders a hair too wide for their door.

He shook the snow off his cloak as Jehan took it from him and hung it. "My thanks."

"It's good of you to come, Uncle!"

Quasimodo grinned. His adoptive father had given him many gifts in his life, but none could compare with this: the love of two boys and a little girl who had grown up with his deformity, and so saw the caretaker, their uncle, a man they loved, not the monster others gave wide berth.

"Not come on Christmas? I was raised in a church, you know," he lowered his voice impressively. "The Archdeacon was a very strict man who made sure we kept all the holy days."

"Really?" Clopin asked, all wide eyes and attentive ears.

"Papa _was_ the Archdeacon, bête," Jehan rolled his eyes.

"Don't call me 'bête', imbécile!" Clopin snapped immediately.

"No one here is bête or an imbécile," Frollo's voice interrupted. "You should have better language in front of guests. What nonsense are you telling them now, my son?" he asked as he strode in to shake his fosterling's hand.

"Just that the Archdeacon of my youth was always very…firm…about our holy days."

"Hmmm. He should have been. Esmeralda! Quasimodo has arrived!"

"I heard! But if I don't watch this milk, it'll curdle—"

"Quasi!" Little Rosa flung herself at the deformed man, large green eyes adoring. "Horsie please?"

"He just got here, Rosa—" Frollo tried to prize his daughter off, but Quasimodo lifted a hand.

"It's fine, Father. I believe I have enough energy to give one very small four-year-old a ride."

"Me, me!" Rosa clapped eagerly.

When Christmas dinner was over and pudding eaten, Esmeralda passed the children's bedroom while Quasimodo was telling them a story. His gift with words had proven as versatile as his talent for carving, and she paused to listen, noting how all three of her children sat upright and attentive in their bed as he spoke.

"…the middle of the night, there was a terrible pounding on his door." Quasimodo beat his fist against the wooden bedstead, making Clopin jump and Rosa cuddle closer to Jehan. "So the Archdeacon hurried and threw it open to find a messenger there, bearing terrible news. The gypsy he loved was to be burned as a witch!" On cue, her children gasped, and she felt long fingers steal around her waist.

"What tale has he chosen tonight?" her husband's voice murmured low in her ear. She relaxed against his chest. Even after all these years, she could still melt into that sound.

"Listen," she whispered.

"What did he do?" the impatient Clopin asked.

"He rescued her, of course," Jehan answered quickly. "Right? He went to save her from the evil Captain Phoebus?"

"'Evil Captain Phoebus'?" Frollo murmured.

"He has to be the evil one. You're the good guy," she replied sotto-voce.

"Yes," Quasimodo continued dramatically. "He jumped on his horse and raced away to Paris, which was a five-day ride from his village, but God and love helped him, so he made it in one."

"I seem to recall three, and two terrifying nights," Frollo edited from behind her.

"Shhh. A little myth never hurt a story."

"And when they got there, to the cavern of the Cour des Miracles, they found the gypsies ready to storm the Palace of Justice. So they marched through Paris, with the Archdeacon right at the front!"

"He remembers this very differently than I do," Frollo muttered with an indulgent smile, drawing her away from the door. "Let him finish making us into heroes for our children without us."

"What would you rather do?" she asked flirtatiously as he guided her into their room and closed the door.

"As if you didn't know," he breathed, lowering his mouth to her neck.

Later, when she had moved to climax atop him and they were curled together, her dark arm splayed across his pale chest, he brushed her temple with his mouth, mentally replaying Quasimodo's sensationalized family history.

"Do you ever wish it could have been different? That we might have stayed in Paris, for instance?" he asked her.

"Never," she replied quietly, lifting her head to study his face in the moonlight. "In Paris, you were the Archdeacon and I the gypsy of Quasimodo's tale. Now we have three beautiful children, and if I no longer dance for my living, I have traded that for the only thing I ever wanted from the instant I laid eyes on you."

"Oh?" he raised his eyebrows. "And that was…?"

She laughed. "Your love, you impossible man."

"Ah." He ran a hand down her side and rolled her onto her back, leaning over her, the intensity of worship glittering in his blue eyes.

He lowered his head to murmur into her mouth. "You have that, my beloved."

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A/N: And that's the end. I hope this proved an enjoyable read to everyone who made it this far. Thank you and please let me know what you thought!


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